Piemonte Winemaking Documentary Premieres At TIFF — SkimNews
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- Low Lies the Land, directed by Emanuele Gerosa, world premieres Friday at TIFF after six years of production that included more than a year of research.
- The documentary captures multigenerational Piemonte families contending with hotter summers, shrinking harvests, and younger generations abandoning the vineyards for cities.
- A broker representing an unnamed foreign investment fund — rumored to be Chinese — visits the families with "once-in-a-lifetime" buyout offers, framing the film's central dilemma of heritage versus financial security.
- Thom Powers, TIFF's chief documentary programmer, called the film simultaneously "an escapist Italian travel fantasy" and "a slow burning suspense" playing out over years.
- Shot in 2.39:1 widescreen by cinematographer Alvise Tedesco with an original score by Jonas Struck, the film is produced by Real Lava and Imagine5, with Dogwoof handling U.S. and international sales.
- Additional TIFF screenings are scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 15 and Friday, Sept. 18.
Why it matters: The documentary arrives as Italy's small winegrowers absorb converging pressures — climate-driven harvest declines, rural depopulation, and acquisition interest from anonymous foreign capital — making the film's central question, whether ancestral vineyards can outlive their aging stewards, a concrete economic and cultural crisis rather than an abstract one.
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