I recuperanti

(The Scavengers)
by Ermanno Olmi
96’, Italy, 1970

Gianni returns to the Altopiano of Asiago aft er the tragic experience of World War II. It is 1945. Th e mountains are repopulating with youths who had left, en masse, to become soldiers. Many will never return. Young Gianni looks for work, but it isn’t easy in those miserable years marked by the recently ended war. He meets an old, strange mountain man, Du, who invites him to help him recover relics left  behind from the First World War in the rocks and meadows of the Altopiano. Gianni, hesitant at first, finally follows him and together they cross the mountains, picking up old unexploded bombs, grenades, bullets, and pieces of guns and cannons. He even buys a metal-detector that helps him with this work. Th e love for a girl will soon make Gianni change his life and his work. On the other hand,old Du, the emblematic and pivotal figure in the story, will continue his work as a scavenger, laughed at and considered crazy by the people of the Altopiano.

Ermanno Olmi
Born in Bergamo in 1931, he earned a place among the greats of Italian cinema with his Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival for L’albero degli zoccoli, the fi rst in a long series of prestigious international awards. In the 1980s he moved to the Altopiano of Asiago where he still lives in a house on the edge of the woods, opposite that of Mario Rigoni Stern.