We’re right at the end of the Great War, after the last bloody battles of 1917 on the Asiago plateau. In a trench, a group of soldiers lives in fear, alternating long periods of waiting with sudden flurries of action. The enemy trench is just a few metres away, “so close you can almost hear them breathing”. The mountainous landscape is lit up in the night by a thick blanket of snow.
In places where, when it will all be over, greenery will bloom again and cancel out the memory of all the sacrifice, death lurks around every corner, as useless as war, as inexplicable as the orders that arrive from some desk in a warm room somewhere. Those who survive won’t be any better off as they’ll be “sentenced to die twice”.
The camera, accompanied by Paolo Fresu’s music, lingers effectively on the Asiago plateau, during a freezing cold winter. The trench shots were filmed in Valgiardini, 1,100 metres above sea level, while the exterior shots were taken in the locality of Dosso Di Sopra Val Formica – Cima Larici, 1,800 metres above sea level.
We’re right at the end of the Great War, after the last bloody battles of 1917 on the Asiago plateau. In a trench, a group of soldiers lives in fear, alternating long periods of waiting with sudden flurries of action. The enemy trench is just a few metres away, “so close you can almost hear them breathing”. The mountainous landscape is lit up in the night by a thick blanket of snow.
In places where, when it will all be over, greenery will bloom again and cancel out the memory of all the sacrifice, death lurks around every corner, as useless as war, as inexplicable as the orders that arrive from some desk in a warm room somewhere. Those who survive won’t be any better off as they’ll be “sentenced to die twice”.
The camera, accompanied by Paolo Fresu’s music, lingers effectively on the Asiago plateau, during a freezing cold winter. The trench shots were filmed in Valgiardini, 1,100 metres above sea level, while the exterior shots were taken in the locality of Dosso Di Sopra Val Formica – Cima Larici, 1,800 metres above sea level.
One of the many nights at a high-altitude outpost on the North-Eastern front: in 1917 a group of soldiers tries to survive the war of the trenches against the Austrian enemy.
