The English translation of the title is "The Hole." Let me outline the plot for you: some people go down a very big cave. An old shepherd who lives nearby gets older. That's it, and it takes 90 minutes to happen. And it does this completely without dialogue. The only translations they bothered with were a few inter-titles, and about one minute of black-and-white TV early in the movie about a new office tower in the north of the country - which I think was meant to set the time period (1961). The big question is: how interesting can they make a plot that minimal?

The movie is set in the hilly region in southern Italy around the real cave, the Bifurto Abyss (over 600m deep). An area that director Michelangelo Frammartino's cinematography succeeds in making one of the most beautiful places in the world. It felt like the cinematography was done by a still photographer - most of the shots consist of an unmoving camera and a view we look at for 20 seconds to a minute as tiny changes occur within it - a postage-stamp-sized truck making its way up a hill, or a time lapse of the sun rising.

90 minutes of this was a bit much for me. The shots inside the cave, as lovely as they were, got a bit tiring. But the exterior shots of the hills and twisted trees and sweeping clouds - so beautiful. Fans of great cinematography should not miss this.