(Sunday 9th Oct / 8pm / £5/4)
(Michelangelo Frammartino / 2010 / 88 minutes / Italy, Germany, Switzerland / Certificate U)

An old shepherd lives out his days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He is sick, but believes that he can find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks every day.

Meanwhile, a goat kid is born. As the shepherd struggles at the end of his life, the baby goat shakily enters the world and gains strength eventually to go to pasture. Above on the hillside, a majestic tree stirs in the mountain breeze and slowly changes through the seasons, until transformed into fuel through the ancestral work of the local Calabrian charcoal makers.

A beautiful poetic ode to life cycles and mortality, from a peaceful
observational viewpoint.