The GRA is Rome’s ring road, around which lives have come to a halt on the fringes of a society that races on. The last eel fisherman of the Tiber River works on stoically. An ambulance man braves night-time traffic on his way to accidents. A poverty-stricken nobleman smokes a cigar in the bath.

The first documentary ever to win the Golden Lion at Venice, Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA is a charmingly humanist and roving look at contemporary Rome, filmed over two years from a minivan. The film sidesteps the city’s iconic landmarks to explore the peripatetic lives of some of its inhabitants.