From The Depths

From The Depths, Your eyes will get used to the darkness

Halfway between observational cinema and a dark, sensory experience, From The Depths takes us deep into the heart of Italy’s last active coal mine. Here we follow a group of miners who, after years underground, now face the imminent closure of their workplace due to unsustainable maintenance costs.

Among them is Patrizia, the only and last female miner in Italy, whose daily descent into the earth becomes a profound act of defiance. Each day, she challenges darkness, fear, and the presence of 150 men, carving a place for herself in a world that is literally collapsing.

When the mine’s future is threatened, the workers refuse to surrender. They occupy the tunnels in protest, taking back the depths that have defined their lives.

Director Valentina Pedicini spent over two years gaining exclusive access to film this radical work, entirely shot underground. With just a four-person crew living for twenty-six days at 500 meters below sea level, she builds a film that transforms physical descent into an existential journey.

Through long silences, suspended editing, and the lone voice of a woman, From The Depths turns numbers into lives:
57,600 hours spent below ground.
150 miners still at work.
10 years without selling a single ton of coal.
One woman.

The result is an immersive and haunting portrait of resistance and humanity, where the boundaries between labor and life dissolve, and where the darkness itself becomes a mirror of survival.