Stelvio. Crossroads of Peace, 2014
Type of project: Documentary
Category: Director
Description: Stelvio. Crossroads of Peace is a documentary film about an extraordinary place in the heart of Europe: The Stelvio Pass.
While the Stelvio alpine glacier is a big tourist attraction for summer skiing, the mountain road to the Pass - a wonder of engineering built in 1825 by the Austrian Empire - entices athletes to retrace the exploits of Fausto Coppi and the cyclists of the Giro d’Italia.
But once upon a time people competed here for non-sporting reasons. One hundred years ago on these peaks, soldiers of the First World War faced their enemy in the bitter cold.
Bombs, trenches, weapons and tins of food can still be found in the snow over a century later. This is Mario’s passion. He is a hotel porter and former member of the Italian Alpine brigade who dedicates all of his free time to the memory of those that died on the frontline of The White War.
Mario’s story is just one of many which transform this glacier into a microcosm of life. In addition, Stelvio. Crossroads of Peace recounts the stories of Claudia, a forest ranger; Gustav Thöni and Deborah Compagnoni, former Olympic skiers; Arturo Pompa Quintavalla, a mechanic who loves flying and is the inventor of Artic rescue tools which he tests personally on the glacier; Renato, a hotelier who is in love with the silence of these peaks; and Lorenz, a shaman who lives at the foot of the Stelvio road.
Weaving together the stories of these and other protagonists with elegant shots of the majestic peaks (filmed from the ground and the air), the documentary invites the viewer to immerse themselves in the unexpected poetry of this Alpine microcosm. The viewer is accompanied on a dynamic climb which is, above all, a spiritual ascent to discover a glacier transformed from a point of conflict between two hostile forces to a meeting place, a place of change and discovery: a crossroads of peace.
