TORONTO – Truffle hunting season may be behind us, but Italian attention on the elusive fungi isn’t likely to fade until the David Di Donatello Awards in May. Twenty-eight-year-old Director Gabriele Fabbro, who in 2022 was named by Moviemaker Magazine as one of the top screenwriters to watch, is enjoying Award season buzz for his second film Trifole. The film’s October release in Italy spanned across 40 cinemas in Rome, Turin and Milan, and will likely hit U.S. theatres before this Spring.
Trifole stars celebrated stage and television actor Umberto Orsini as Igor, an elderly trufficulteur whose livelihood is suddenly threatened. When his granddaughter Dalia travels from London to Piedmont to help care for an ailing Igor, she rediscovers her roots while teaming with his hunting dog as they scour the forests. To help save his home, the two must locate and sniff out the prizewinning white truffle before rival hunters excavate the delicate mushroom’s fruiting body.
Orsini, a Piedmont native (from Novara), is perfectly cast as his home region is host to the white truffle in the small township of Alba. The coveted truffle grows in the deep fertile forests of Langhe, between the Tanaro and Po Rivers and the Alps and Apennine Mountain ranges. Its clay and marl soil also means that the truffle grows larger around the roots of the oak and poplar trees.
The unique characteristics of the topography matter, specifically when considering the preservation of the truffle industry. Fabbro’s film features a hunting dog (Birba) rather than a pig, which up until 1985, was the hunter’s foraging companion. Why were they banned? Pigs dig erratically and were prone to destroying the environment and eating the truffles. Not to mention they’re not discreet animals – a disadvantage for secretive hunters.
The film was a homecoming for the Milan-born Fabbro who grew up in a rural area near lake Como, before moving to the Los Angeles campus of the New York Film Academy. “This was a very personal project, going back to Italy, meeting the people whose stories we wanted to tell”, says Fabbro. On his experience directing the acclaimed Orsini: “I have met so many actors who treat me like a newcomer, but with Umberto Orsini, the process was so collaborative. He was almost like a script supervisor”.
Fabbro’s co-writer and co-star Ydalie Turk (Igor’s granddaughter) said of the writing process, “I was interested in exploring the monetary and emotional value of the legacy and identity of truffle-hunting as a profession, but also of an entire territory that is very often associated with the white truffle”. Regarding her character’s journey, “I hope the movie resonates with young people…we’re facing a lot of existential uncertainty, and it results in disillusionment. I hope that the film serves as an antidote to these feelings.”
(Images courtesy of TrifoleMovie and Cinefonie)
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/cont
