Home » Trento Festival: a social film set on a Swiss mountain pasture wins

Trento Festival: a social film set on a Swiss mountain pasture wins

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No bucolic landscapes, Heidi and goats waving goodbye, but hard work in the stable, uncertainties about the future and even a small detective story set in a dilapidated mountain pasture in the Canton of Ticino: this is the setting for Also tonight the cows will dance on the roof by Aldo Gugolz, the Swiss film that won the Genziana d’oro as best film of the Trento Festival, the oldest and most important in Italy on the mountains, mountaineering and the culture of the highlands. After touching the Andes and the Caucasus, therefore, the coveted City of Trento Grand Prix this year remains in the Alps.

The title is cartoonish, but the plot is dramatic: Fabiano, the restless owner of the hut, is not exactly in the ideal situation to start a family, but he will soon be a father. His girlfriend is pregnant, and he hopes to fulfill his dream of a simple life surrounded by nature and animals. A simple and delicate film, which “proposes a profound reflection on the theme of family inheritance, between conditioning, freedom and the possibility of emancipation”, reads one of the jury’s motivations. Yes, but what does it have to do with mountaineering? Actually not much, like most of the golden Gentians of recent years. To say: in 2020 a Georgian political film had triumphed on the globalized world of work, the previous year a documentary on elderly campers fans of the Tour de France, in 2018 a transsexual story set in a Colombian village.



“Holy Bread” by Iranian Rahim Zabihi, awarded with the Golden Gentian for Best Film on mountaineering, populations and mountain life


The answer is given directly by the president of TFF, Mauro Leveghi: “The Trento Film Festival has never been afraid to dare and has always tried the less simple, more tiring, but richer in meaning and truth path: the one that leads to understanding the mountain, its cultures, the life of its people, in a non-trivial and superficial way but by digging and investigating, at the cost of bringing out the deepest contradictions. The winning film of this year’s Grand Prix has the same courage and tells the mountain out of easy idealizing stereotypes: between anguish, fear, fragility, but without ever losing hope of succeeding. This is what we all feel, in the second year of the pandemic, in the face of the challenge of restarting ».

It is no mystery that for some years now, under the cinematographic direction of Sergio Fant, the most awarded films at the Trentino festival have marginally to do with the mountains in the strict sense, favoring social and cultural themes with an arthouse edge, in so as to be able to aspire to larger and more prestigious stages. So too are the topics addressed by the films selected for this year’s festival (98 in total, from 31 countries, many of which in international previews, 23 in competition): the impact of the pandemic on communities and mountain activities , nature and environmental sustainability, adventure, the peoples of the world, the comparison between different places and cultures.

La Genziana d'oro as Best Exploration or Adventure Movie:

The Golden Gentian for Best Exploration or Adventure Movie: “Here I Am, Again” by Bulgarian Polly Guentcheva


For the record, the other two Golden Gentians went to Holy Bread by the Iranian Rahim Zabihi (Best Film on Mountaineering, Populations and Mountain Life) and the Bulgarian Here I Am, Again by Bulgarian director Polly Guentcheva (Best Exploration or Adventure Film). The first is a documentary that follows the grueling and risky work of the kulbars Kurds, the clandestine carriers of goods across the treacherous mountains between Iran and Iraq; the second is a multifaceted portrait of the Bulgarian high altitude mountaineer and zoologist Boyan Petrov, and the breaking latest news of the incredible international rescue operation that is triggered following his disappearance on Shisha Pangma.

One of the best films seen this year at the Trentino festival, even if it hasn't won any awards:

One of the best films seen this year at the Trentino festival, even if it didn’t win any awards: “Godspeed, Los Polacos!” by Adam Nawrot


These then are the films voted by the international jury. Those preferred by the public of mountain enthusiasts, who continue to represent the hard core of the Trentino festival, were above all those of the Alp & Ism section but also a couple of films in competition that we would like to recommend: first of all Godspeed, The Poles! by Adam Nawrot, on the daring story of a group of Polish students fleeing the Communist regime during the Cold War to go beyond the curtain to explore the rivers of the Americas by kayak; and then also the very Italian docu-film Paolo Cognetti. Dreams of the Great North by Dario Acocella on the writer’s wanderings “into the wild” following the traces of his American literary myths, from Jack London to Hemingway, from Melville to Carver passing through Thoreau and Krakauer. An adventurous trip to the Alps in Alaska with his friend Nicola Magrin, crossing the places of the great masters of American literature, up to the Magic bus 142 where Chris McCandless spent his last days before dying.

The writer Paolo Cognetti in

The writer Paolo Cognetti in “Dreams of the Great North”


“How difficult it is to organize a great cultural event at the time of Covid, we now know, because it is the second edition conditioned by the limits and uncertainties related to the health emergency – commented the director of the exhibition Luana Bisesti during the award ceremony -. But the response of the public, which filled the cinemas and crowded the virtual ones of the live streaming events, once again repays us for the efforts and makes us look to the future with hope. In June we will be back in the streets with MontagnaLibri and at the theater with many events linked to the history of mountaineering and mountain literature: the success of this “first half” can only comfort us and give us the necessary energy to go forward with enthusiasm ».

All the films of the festival are still visible online until May 16 on the online.trentofestival.it platform.

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