High altitude thrillers

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The Christmas Devil in Val di Fassa Disappearing into the fog Crime on the lakeside Amidst shocking crimes and brilliant solutions

Dolomites – Val di Fassa

The Christmas Devil in Val di Fassa

In Alpine areas of Germanic culture, the Krampus, or Christmas Devil, appears on 5 December, the day before the Feast of St. Nicholas. According to legend, during famines young men from mountain villages would disguise themselves with coats of feathers, pelts and animal horns to terrorize neighbouring villages and steal their food. However, the devil would hide among them, recognisable by his goats’ cloven hooves, and only Bishop Nicholas was able to defeat him. Ever since, accompanied by St. Nicholas, young men dressed as demons take part in an annual parade through the streets, distributing gifts to children or remonstrating with the naughty ones. Sometimes, though, someone goes missing. Like little Tommaso, who mysteriously disappeared in the woods during Krampusnacht in Val di Fassa, in the Alps of Trentino. When he was found five years later, his strange behaviour frightened his family, making them suspicious. What if the little boy was an incarnation of the devil? In Stefano Lodovichi’s Deep in the Wood, the settings are integral to the story which was shot in Tamion, hamlet of Vigo di Fassa; in nearby Pera, where the Krampus parade takes place; in Valle di Moena and Canazei. Let’s try to discover the forests of Alba which appear much less threatening by day than they do on the freezing winter night when the devil comes to steal children away.

Disappearing into the fog

On a foggy night like many others just before Christmas a red-haired girl disappears in Avechot, and this isolated little village, high in the mountains, where nothing ever happens and everyone seems to know everything, is gradually forced to reveal its secrets. The main locations of The Girl in the Fog, written and directed by Donato Carrisi, are a Lake: Carezza, “the eye of the Dolomites”, on the Nova Levante plateau, whose waters catch the reflections of the peaks of Latemar and Catinaccio, and a Hotel: the Grand Hotel Carezza whose faded grandeur holds traces of the girl’s disappearance. According to an ancient legend, when a wizard failed in his attempt to trap and kidnap the lake-nymph he loved, he vengefully threw a rainbow into the water where it burst into a thousand pieces giving the lake the colours of an ocular iris. The nymph also disappeared… Searching for her is an excellent reason to head into the woods and roads of the Val d’Ega and visit the other locations used in the film, Parco Naturale Puez Odle, San Lorenzo di Sebato and Bressanone, up to 1,000m in Sarentino and Vipiteno (one of Italy’s most beautiful villages).

Crime on the lakeside

There was a time when the waters of the lake were inhabited by a monstrous snake. The eyes of this creature should never be looked into directly for the observer risks falling into an eternal sleep. A young and beautiful girl is found dead on the lakeshore, to all appearances asleep. Someone has carefully placed her in a foetal position and covered her with a jacket. It is Commissioner Sanzio’s task to investigate the mystery of The Girl by the Lake. Near the Italian border with Slovenia, the Lago Superiore di Fusine in Tarvisio is a place that emanates a blend of melancholy, peace and mystery, an atmosphere similar to that evoked by the film. The story’s tragic ending has its roots in the secrets of the girl’s small, isolated community in the province of Udine which looks out towards the mountains where pale sunlight peeps through the green and brown of the vegetation and embodies the noir atmosphere that frames the story. The main location is the village of Moggio Udinese: home to the lost child whose disappearance is at the heart of the story. Commissioner Sanzio’s operational base is in the 18thcentury Palazzo Lupieri in Preone, which also houses a natural history museum. Villa Tartagna Colla in Tricesimo serves as the clinic where the commissioner’s wife is being treated, while Sanzio himself lives in Udine.

Amidst shocking crimes and brilliant solutions

Rocco Schiavone is not happy in Aosta. It is always grey in the mountains, where it rains and snows. In his eyes, the territory is hostile, as if the climate reflects the Deputy Commissioner’s state of mind making him blind to its true beauty and warmth, of a sort. There are two places where he allows himself to relax and dialogue with his “conscience”: his apartment, whose exterior is the 17th century Palazzo Ansermin and the Roman Theatre. Like Rocco, let’s take a seat at a table in the storied cafe beneath the porch of the Hotel de Ville in Piazza Chanouxand relax for a moment, before heading off with him when we’re ready, to discover the other places in the city and village by following terrible crimes and brilliant solutions. The murder of a man takes us down “the Black Run” in Champoluc, Val d’Ayas. An apparent suicide brings us to the cloister of the Collegiate of Sant’Orso in Aosta. One case begins at the monumental cemetery of Sant’Orso, another with a group of architects intent on climbing the 4,000m Polluce peak in the Monte Rosa mountain range. We walk with him through the Forense Cryptoporticus, where he often updates colleagues and superiors. In the midst of the delicate investigation into a little girl’s kidnapping, we accompany him on the gondola lift from Aosta to Pila, a skiing area in the village of Gressan. Better equipped than Rocco, who stubbornly insists on his uniform of green loden coat and perennially soaked desert boots, we head off with him to discover this enchanting little region.

The locations

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Dolomites – Val di Fassa

The Christmas Devil in Val di Fassa

Lake Carezza

Disappearing into the fog

Fusine lakes

Crime on the lakeside

Piazza Chanoux – Aosta

Amidst shocking crimes and brilliant solutions