“Torneranno i prati”. A movie by Ermanno Olmi
A production of CINEMA UNDICI and IPOTESI CINEMA with RAI CINEMA
We are at the North-East frontline, after the last bloody battles of 1917 on the Plateau. Events happens always in an unpredictable succession: sometimes there are long waits, where fear makes you count each moment, until it's your time. So that the peace of the mountain becomes the place where you find death. Everything in this film is really happened. And for the past belongs to memory, everyone can recall it according to their sensations.
Eight weeks of shots that show the atmosphere of the First World War, exactly on the Asiago Plateau, among those mountains that were witnesses of the efforts, the tragedies and suffering of soldiers of the Great War.
There, the trench, the main set of the film, has been reproduced: inside, communication trenches, dormitory and the Captain's bunker at Val Giardini, 1100 meters above sea level; outside, the environment at Val Formica, 1800 meters above sea level.
Even if the plot is linear, the film proceeds with single events with different main characters, according to the importance required by the situation. For this reason, cahracters of different ages and origin will appear, and be performed by both famous actors, among the others Claudio Santamaria and Alessandro Sperduti, and actors at their first experience.
But the significant and irrevocable element is the coexistence between two different humanities: the level of "Superiors" and the level of "humble existences", obliged by war to a daily cohabitation and to equality in front of death.
