‘Was that an earthquake?’ Italy’s great psycho-geographer tackles the Vesuvius-haunted Naples tourists seldom see

His films about Rome’s ringroad and the islanders and refugees of Lampedusa have won awards. Now Gianfranco Rosi is completing his trilogy, capturing a Naples ‘that is not immediately there’ A uniform grey nimbostratus has blocked the rays of the London sun the day I speak to Gianfranco Rosi, but this consummately Italian film-maker is feeling right at home. “When Jean Cocteau visited Naples, he wrote a letter to his mother in which he said, ‘Vesuvius makes all the clouds in the world.’ And I...

By Philip Oltermann