The Inner Mountain

In Catholic hagiography, Saint Anthony, Abbot of the Desert, is the protector of animals. He is a central figure in the Italian countryside where people’s wealth depends on the health of the livestock. Every year, when the day arrives, hundreds of people queue up in front of the church with their animals, awaiting the Saint’s blessing. The donkey belonging Antonio, a farmer from the mountains, falls sick and his master will do anything to cure it. After the village priest refuses to travel to bless the sick animal, the young farmer, desperate, confides directly in the Saint, hoping that he will perform a miracle. With this film, Michele Sammarco plunges into the tangled terrain of human belief. Without judgement, with the curiosity of an explorer or a mystique, Sammarco constructs an account of the sensitive relationship between a master and his beast, as they might have been in the past. With his film, he invites us to cross over the frontier of this universe frozen in another time, where even miracles are possible. More than a film, The Inner Mountain is a mystic path.

Elena López Reira