The film tells the story of a long imaginary journey, built upon the extraordinary images gathered by Claudio—an underwater filmmaker—among liquid transparencies and mysterious currents. A journey that leads from the Alps to the sea, through little- explored waters brimming with reflections and extraordinary stories, even at shallow depths. (CLICK HERE TO ACCESS FULL PRESSKIT.)
It feels like a dream: among rays of light filtering from above and the shadows that envelop them, a freediving dancer guides us, appearing and vanishing among the secrets of the subterranean world. The aesthetic urgency that drives Claudio leads him from caves to mountains, to contemplate bubbles trapped beneath ice, the swirling particles of food dancing in the current, the elegant trajectories of life revealed underwater. His gaze ultimately reaches the sea, where he encounters the camouflaged creatures of rocky crevices and the soaring elegance of great pelagic animals.
But Claudio’s journey is not limited to the invisible. He also meets the humans who inhabit the submerged world, following the traces of underwater labor. On Jeju Island, in South Korea, he is welcomed by the matriarchal community of the Haenyeo, the “women of the sea,” elderly and proud freedivers, poor in technology but rich in memory. From observer to accomplice, Claudio shares in part their destiny: at sea, he too is a hunter—but of images.
The film closes within the submerged labyrinth carved by water over hundreds of kilometers beneath the limestone coasts of the Yucatán. There, in the sacred realm of the Maya, among the hypnotic movements of a freediving dancer, Claudio captures the fleeting grace of submerged lightness.
IMDBPRO PAGE FOR THE SUBMERGED LIGHTNESS