For centuries, what lies below—and out of sight—has fascinated humans. Many of our oldest and most beloved stories are about descents into unseeable underworlds. In Underland, an adaptation of Robert Macfarlane’s bestselling book of the same name, director Robert Petit examines why subterranean spaces hold such a timeless allure. Split into chapters, the documentary spotlights an archaeologist’s attempts to map a sacred Mayan cave; an urban explorer’s efforts to preserve present-day tunnel-dwellers’ stories; and a scientist’s search for dark matter in a sterile lab hidden kilometers below Earth’s surface. Narrated by two-time Oscar nominee Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, MVFF46) and produced by Golden Lion-winning filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (The Whale, MVFF45), this beautifully lensed, brilliantly scored, and grippingly philosophical documentary suggests that the key to humanity’s future exists in the many layers of history preserved in the darkness of abandoned subway systems and in the hallowed bellies of caves. —Kate Bove
Robert Petit
Robert Petit is a London-based writer and director working to collide the disciplines of geography and filmmaking to tell stories that challenge narratives of identity, landscape, and belonging. A graduate in Directing from the National Film and Television School, he is also co-director of the creative studio Milkwood, as well as being a long-time collaborator of the writer Robert Macfarlane (author of Underland). Together they made the critically acclaimed experimental work Upstream, a film shot entirely from the air that follows a Scottish river to its source high up in the Cairngorm mountains.