30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

In Valstagna, along the Brenta Canal near Vicenza, tobacco was once cultivated on little parcels of land “stolen” from the steep, rocky ridges of the valley. Over centuries of enormous fatigue, farmers raised stone walls to give rise to a precious and unique terraced landscape, which in recent decades has slowly degraded and is now largely in a state of abandon. Here the destiny of many diverse people plays out against the current; all are united by the desire to give new life to these terraces. Some cling stubbornly and proudly to ancient family lands, while others leave their jobs as quarry workers to find themselves here. Still more arrive from urban lives to tend the fields and dry walls, thanks to an innovative adoption programme; those of Moroccan origins cultivate a dream of integration for their own children by growing mint imported from North Africa on these terraced slopes. Piccola terra is a message of hope for marginal mountain areas, and a narrative about the universal value of the link to the earth, independent of economic interests, political impediments, and cultural barriers. The “world of the defeated” of the 1960s, immortalized here in the moving period images by Giuseppe Taffarel, is now a mountain that returns to life. 

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  Michele Trentini

  Born in Rovereto in 1974, he earned a degree in sociology from the University of Dresden with a thesis on ecological communitarianism in Eastern Germany. He does research and documentation using methods taken from visual anthropology and is the author of documentaries, including Furriadroxus (2005), Cheyenne, trent'anni (2009), Tre carnevali e ½ (2007), Il canto scaltro (2009) and Carnival King of Europe (2009).