The road of our Fathers (Sulla via dei Padri)

Best Short Documentary

Directed by
Bruno Palma

• Overview

The story of Our Fathers' Roads centres around a family of farmers who live in Montella in the Monti Picentini in the province of Avellino, cattle ranchers suspended between past and present.

Felice Moscariello is the most senior, Massimo is his eldest son and Manuel is his grandson.
Three generations facing today's present, where their traditions seem to have less and less importance.
The documentary expresses the strength of family ties, but not only blood ties amongst the nuclear family. The Moscariello family also includes friends and colleagues, all active participants in the team.
These people have a lot in common, but above all they share a strong bond with the traditions and history of their forefathers. This link remerges twice every year when they travel the 130 kilometres with the Moscariello herd towards pastures in Puglia in the winter and mountain pastures in Irpinia in the summer.

Even with today's GPS technology and the fact that they can travel short distances in cars to get a bit of rest, the Transhumance is still very similar to how it was it was done even before the birth of Christ.

Kilometre for kilometre, the Moscariello's Transhumance cattle drive is one of the longest in Europe, an ecosystem in movement.
Because it's not easy to keep an eye on 250 free-range Podolica cattle, the trip, made on foot, is done in a group. However, in their own way, each participant also makes an interior voyage through their memories and personal history, and maybe even, unintentionally, a wider, more generic human history. The same gestures are repeated and the same territory crossed as they sometimes suffer the cold, sometimes the heat, just like those that walked these roads before them.