Italian director and screenwriter, Ermanno Olmi has died at the age of 86. He was born on July 24, 1931 in Bergamo in a deeply Catholic peasant family. Creator of a personal and innovative language, he narrated the great myths of the Christian tradition and, with the film L’albero degli zoccoli (title of English version: The Tree of Wooden Clogs), brought to the cinema for the first time an Italian dialect as a language.
With his death comes the loss of a master of cinema and a great example of culture and life. Minister Dario Franceschini commented: “Being deeply intellectual, he investigated and explored the mysteries of man and recounted, with the poetry that distinguishes his works, the relationship between man and nature, the dignity of work, spirituality.”
His last work, released a year ago, was the documentary on the figure of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini Vedete, sono uno di voi, for whom maestro Olmi obtained Honorable Mention at the 2018 edition of the Silver Ribbon Documentaries.