Valtellina, the Roots of a Love (2017)

Shaded by the rough and yet delightful summits of the Valtellina lives a people who loves the land and its ancient traditions. Now it is in the process of rediscovering the value of organic farming and cultivation. This is hard work that requires patience and a dedication that verges on devotion. But it is a passion that is requited by the soil: It rewards those that protect it with unique fruit whose flavour had been hidden in the back of men's minds for ages. Men like Marcel and Francesco, who have discovered the ancient taste of wine, a thousand years' tradition in this Lombardian valley where the Adda flows. Like Amedeo, in whose enchanting garden more than a thousand different types of plants grow; or like Cleto, who prepares rye bread in the manner of his ancestors and who even grows his own grain on the steep slopes of the Alps surrounding the valley. And finally Patrizio, who keeps old, nearly extinct grains from being completely forgotten. The country's new heroes are recreating the atmosphere of their environment with the changing colours of the fields that once dominated the valley, a panorama that older generations had once been familiar with, but the younger ones had never been able to know.