L'albero degli zoccoli - L'Arbre aux sabots (1978)

Ermanno Olmi, Italy

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Between the autumn of 1897 and the summer of 1898, four families live together on a farm near Bergamo in the Bassa Bergamasca. Among the members of the community there is a deep spiritual connection that leads them to experience beautiful and tragic things, ordinary moments and extraordinary events together. Two young people court each other and marry; a penniless father secretly cuts down a tree to carve new wooden shoes for his son, who goes to school six kilometres a day; an old man fertilizes his tomatoes with chicken excrement so that they ripen faster. Ermanno Olmi's L'albero degli zoccoli (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) is an almost documentary chronicle of everyday farming life at the end of the penultimate century, epically laid out and following the rhythm of the seasons.

Winner of the Palme d’Or Cannes in 1978.