Il Dono

A gentle, beguiling hymn to a semi-deserted Calabrian countryside and those who stayed behind, Il Dono is a portrait of depopulation in the village of Caulonia (the filmmaker’s ancestral town), which saw a dramatic decrease in inhabitants from roughly 15,000 in the 1950s to just a few hundred people at the time of the film’s making. In mainly long, static, observational takes and with next to no dialogue, Il Dono pieces together the fragments of a place guided by slow rhythms and which could be described as “old world” with traditions, rituals, charm aplenty, and not a few ruins from the relentless ravages of time. Gorgeously shot on 16mm (then transferred to 35mm, and presented here in a recent digital restoration of superlative color), each frame of Il Dono is like a painting, whether a landscape, portraits of great, weather-worn faces, or still lives reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi’s glass bottles.