This is the story of a thousand-year-old tree, resilient ambassador of Nature and silent witness of History. The lives of men and women slip under its fronds, often unaware of how much their existence depends on its presence. This is the story of s'ozzastru and of the generous and solid land that welcomed it. In 2021 in Sardinia, a thousand-year-old wild olive tree burned. This fire devasted 70.000 acres of land and houses. Thousands of animals died, suffocated or burned alive.A year later, the tree sprouted again, becoming a symbol of resilience. Every year, around the world, 7 millions of acres of land are destroyed in over 60.000 fires, almost all caused by human hand.
In Oliena, Sardinia, local legends seem to have disappeared from people’s memories. But the songs, the olive trees, and the fires of San Giovanni evoke them powerfully. Filmmaker Myriam Raccah thus decides to re-enact some of these stories with the help of the villagers, creating a marvellous fresco that unleashes the magic of storytelling and cinema.
Mine of Inferru (Hell in the Sardinian language), Sardinia. Second half of the twentieth century. Sick and weary, an elderly miner gets buried by a landslide while mining a gallery. Suspended within a time-void between life and approaching death, the man describes the world of Inferru through an imaginative existential monologue, blending past, present, and sombre forebodings regarding the future. This film only employs archive footage in its depiction of a mesmerising trip across the final desperate, crazed and yet highly lucid thoughts of its protagonist, who tries to put a permanent end to his reckoning with society and his own conscience.