Sicily: key location for Joshua Oppenheimer’s 'The End'

The End, Joshua Oppenheimer’s new film, supported by the MIC Minority Co-production Fund and the Sicilia Film Commission, will be released in theatres on July 3. The End is a post-apocalyptic story that has received critical acclaim at the Telluride, Toronto, San Sebastián and Berlin Film Festivals.

With this film, the double Oscar® nominated director - for documentaries The Act Of Killing (2012) and The Look Of Silence (2014) - turns his hand to a musical, written with Rasmus Heisterberg, which tells the story of a wealthy family who find refuge in an underground bunker after surviving an environmental apocalypse. It is a powerful, emotional and visually extraordinary film, a tribute to the golden age of Hollywood and a heartfelt hymn to self-acceptance, love, the ability to change and everything that makes us human.

The music for the songs in The End - composed by Joshua Schmidt, the lyrics by Oppenheimer - help to create a unique atmosphere for this long-awaited film project.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s new film – Story and cast

The world has ended. Humanity, perhaps, has not. In an underground bunker redecorated as a luxury home, Mother (Oscar® winner Tilda Swinton), Father (Oscar® nominee Michael Shannon) and Son (George MacKay) live and survive, trying to maintain hope and a sense of normalcy by clinging to small daily rituals. The arrival of a girl from the outside (Moses Ingram) disrupts the delicate balance of this apparent family idyll.

The cast includes Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Michael Shannon, Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny and Lennie James.

The Raffo mine, Sicily, provided a key location for 'The End'

An unusual location in Italy provided the backdrop for The End: after filming in Ireland, the crew and cast moved to Sicily, to the hamlet of Raffo in Petralia Soprana (province of Palermo). The production settled here for several weeks in spring 2023, using the caves of the salt mine as the set for the bunker where the protagonists live.

"We visited 15 mines before choosing the most beautiful salt mine in the world in Petralia Soprana, Sicily, where we spent weeks filming thousands of metres below ground !" said the director about the film's location.

The walls of the mine in this imposing and majestic complex, with some of the largest tunnels and caves in Europe, are embroidered with circular lines and screwholes left by the extraction cutter which raked salt from the rock, making it a unique environment.

This is why some of the disused galleries of the extraction site now house MACSS – Museo Arte Contemporanea Sotto Sale, the only museum of contemporary art in the world hosted in an active salt mine, displaying sculptural works by artists from all over the world and industrial archaeology finds.

The film is distributed by I Wonder Pictures and Unipol Biografilm Collection with the support of MIC and with the support of the Sicilia Film Commission and Regione Sicilia – Assessorato Turismo Sport e Spettacolo e Sviluppo e Coesione Sicilia.

Dorje Film (Italy) co-produces, with producers from Denmark, Germany and Ireland.