L'è uscìa

(It's Like This)
by Urs Frey and Mike Wildbolz
24', Switzerland, 1999

Renzo Maroli lives in Castasegna, in an isolated house on the steep slopes of the Val Bregaglia. Up there only his animals keep him company. “I can manage without
a woman, but without my cows – never”. From the heights of this farmstead, overhanging the valley, this seventy- year-old speaks of solitude as a gift from God and  observes the world which, down below, transforms while he remains indissolubly tied to his land. “I am old, small, ugly and I have the character and colour of the place where I live”. Renzo Maroli speaks “bregagliotto”, the Romansh dialect, sing-song and musical, of his homeland. In his measured words, which emerge from his thick white beard, there is the consciousness of an entire life, barely veiled by a slight sense of melancholy.