The Truffle Hunters

STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO / FILM & TV

For a small and shrinking breed of old Italian men in the forests of Piedmont, truffle hunting is life. It gets them up in the morning and keeps them up at night. It’s the source of arguments with their wives and secrets they take to their graves. Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s The Truffle Hunters is a charming collection of vignettes focused on the unlikely characters behind the million-dollar truffle industry, one of the few trades that defies industrialization. (Efforts to farm truffles have so far been futile, leaving vendors across the world to rely on Piedmont’s humble hunters and their canine sidekicks.) The film is as much about life in Piedmont’s tiny villages as it is about truffles. Those who’ve spent time in Italy know it’s really just a patchwork of vastly different regions and dialects—in this case, the obscure mix of Italian and French that is the Piedmontese language. The Truffle Hunters offers a window into one of Italy’s lesser-seen regions. —J.V.