Documenting the canine search for the world’s most expensive fungi.

By Jordan Raup
I had the opportunity to speak with Kershaw and Dweck to discuss how they pull of their perfect frames, the sacred bond between canine and human, how capitalism is effecting this insular world, the only three truffle recipes you need, and more.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw about their new documentary. The Truffle Hunters is about the men and dogs who sniff out Italy's rare white Alba truffles.

In "The Truffle Hunters," a new documentary by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, Italian men in their 60s, 70s and 80s do as they've done for decades--search the forests of the Alba region for precious white truffles. Their lives are happy and their health is fine, but their work is increasingly endangered.
Hosted by Joe Morgenstern

ALL  OF IT segment with Alison Stewart

Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw join us to discuss directing and producing the film, "The Truffle Hunters," which is shortlisted for the 2020 Oscar for Best Documentary Film and opens March 5. The film follows a group of men in Piedmont, Italy, searching for the valuable and rare white Alba truffle.

Join us in Italy as we venture into the woods with documentary filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck to talk about their film “The Truffle Hunters.” Plus, Gregory and Michael share stories of unlabeled wine and the barter economy.

On designing a process of filmmaking akin to its subjects to extract riches from a fertile story of tradition and an ingredient coveted for all that goes into finding it.
With the film making its way into the world after a celebrated festival run this past year, Dweck and Kershaw spoke about the responsibility they felt towards their subjects and to places on the edge of disappearing in general, using their camera to suspend time yet extend a kind of immortality that only cinema can provide.

Celebrating a long cherished passion in a community that’s struggling to protect its fragile land and a way of life is more important now more than ever in a world that’s forever been changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The group of select men who have been guided by a secret culture and training that’s been passed down through generations, as they hunt for the rare and expensive white Alba truffle, is highlighted in the new documentary, ‘The Truffle Hunters.’

Heard on Morning Edition
NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to movie critic Kenneth Turan about the Oscar-nominated film — The Truffle Hunters — which centers on the perilous search for rare, valuable truffles in Northern Italy.

As filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw show, this insular world is rife with competition, a vibrant black market, and class issues. A scene late in the film has a truffle buyer enjoying a meal, however, one of the truffle brokers tells his daughters he never eats them. Why are truffles so desired, and who are the men in this industry? 

Co-directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw (The Last Race) join us to talk about their immersion into a very closed, arcane multi-tiered society that dates back hundreds of years and the impact that modernity and climate disruption is having on this enchanting corner of the world.

Like truffle-hunting, wine-making or building Rome, filming The Truffle Hunters took time. The filmmakers embedded themselves in the area and find and gain the trust of their wary and secretive subjects. Dweck reveals that they didn’t shoot a single frame of film during their first year exploring the region. And when they finally brought out the cameras, they would often shoot only one scene a day, sometimes allowing the camera to roll for hours to capture only a few minutes of usable footage.

On Evenings with David Astle
Set in the forests of Piedmont, Italy a new documentary delves into the locals who hunt for the rare white Alba truffle.
The film's co-director Gregory Kershaw describes the circuitous path of finding the truffle hunters who he describes as "a secret within the town."

Ren Klyce moderates a conversation with Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw and Stephen Urata where they discuss the process and creation of the soundscape used in The Turffle Hunters.

Join directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw for a conversation about their stunning documentary The Truffle Hunters. Set in the forests of Piedmont, Italy, the film follows a handful of elderly men and their expertly-trained dogs searching for the increasingly rare and coveted Alba truffles. Adhering to a culture and methods passed down for generations and now in danger of extinction, these truffle hunters hold the key for two secrets: a prized ingredient of modern cuisine and the age-old answer to a rich and meaningful life. Dweck and Kershaw are joined by filmmaker Peter Gilbert (Hoop Dreams).

“The film’s a celebration of human spirit,” declares Michael Dweck, co-director of “The Truffle Hunters.” He joined us for a webchat recently and adds, “We wanted to make it because we fell in love with this place and these people. This past year’s been a challenge for so many in so many ways. We think that there’s something very beautiful about sharing this world that’s so connected. Especially at a time when we’re physically and culturally disconnected. We are all yearning for community, and this film shows this community full of joy.”

On Evenings with Mel Bush
In northern Italy there are people who have spent their whole lives hunting truffles with their dogs. Some of them have been doing it for decades, and are over 90 years old. They are passionate and devoted to the forests they truffle hunt in. Filmmaker Michael Dweck spent time with these men and their families and he told ABC Evenings' presenter Mel Bush about this, and about his new film The Truffle Hunters, which will have its premiere in Tasmania this week.

MVFF Contenders Season presents a conversation with 'Truffle Hunters' Writers/Directors Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw and moderated by Documentary Filmmaker Connie Field.

“We lost a lot of cameras (that) flew off into the trees,” says co-director Gregory Kershaw

By Steve Pond

If one purpose of documentaries is to expose viewers to untold stories, then “The Truffle Hunters” does just that. Co-directed by Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck, the film follows a group of elderly Italian men hunting for truffles with their dogs in the woods, revealing a charming top-secret world untouched by modern times that the filmmakers themselves had trouble infiltrating.

5 documentarians on the importance of effecting change: Our job is ‘to shed light into those dark places’. The films by the panelists at Gold Derby’s Meet the BTL Experts: Documentary panel cover vastly different subjects — from trans visibility (Sam Feder‘s “Disclosure”) to regenerative agriculture (Josh Tickell‘s “Kiss the Ground”) and diplomacy (Dror Moreh‘s “The Human Factor”) to the secret and possibly endangered world of truffle hunting (Gregory Kershaw‘s “The Truffle Hunters”) — but they all can open eyes and minds, and most of all, effect change.

Isabella Rossellini first saw “The Truffle Hunters” while serving on the 2020 Sundance jury, where Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s doc — now considered among the frontrunners in the race for the best documentary feature Oscar — first launched.

The Truffle Hunters Q&A session with Wendy Mitchell.

Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw didn’t necessarily get much sleep when they were making their Sony Pictures Classics documentary The Truffle Hunters, about superannuated men and their dogs in Italy who search for the subterranean delicacy.

Conversation with Producers/Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw on their feature documentary The Truffle Hunters.

Episode #65

With "the Truffle Hunters", the Viennale is dedicated to the hunt for white truffles at the end of the festival. Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw on a world into which no digital technology has yet penetrated.

Q&A session with Susan Wrubel, Executive + Artistic Director of Aspen Film Festival

Conversation with THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS co-directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw.
Mill Valley Film Festival | October 2020

Watch this exciting conversation with The Truffle Hunters Directors/Producers/Cinematographers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck, moderated by Eric Kohn, Executive Editor & Chief Critic at IndieWire.

Exploring a near-extinct way of life, The Truffle Hunters finds cinematic gold.

In this special 58th New York Film Festival edition of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen is joined by directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw to discuss their revelatory, earthy documentary The Truffle Hunters. 

TIFF 2020: “Nobody really knew who these truffle hunters were,” Dweck tells TheWrap

Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw chat about their documentary The Truffle Hunters

We talked to Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck, the duo behind one of the biggest delights of the year, The Truffle Hunters

On dog cams and documenting the delicious

Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw in conversation with TIFF in advance of THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS' premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. This beautiful, meditative documentary follows three elderly specialists, and their dogs, as they seek the prized delicacy and contend with poachers in the woods of Northern Italy.

Filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw ventured deep in the forests near Alba, Italy for their documentary, The Truffle Hunters.

Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw  immersed themselves in the daily lives of this small sect of truffle hunters, who only prowl the sloping Italian forests in the dead of night in order to protect the location of the white Alba truffle. Dweck and Kershaw explain the arduous process of gaining trust within the community and the intimacy of filming them.

Michael Dweck, director of Sundance favourite The Last Race answers some questions on the making of this seminal documentary. An evocative portrait of Long Island's last race track.

Michael Dweck is the director of the feature film, "The Last Race", a movie about the last oval track on Long Island, and the battle between those that want to keep racing and those that want to develop the property. Premiers Friday, Nov. 16.

Conversation with Producer Director Michael Dweck on his first film, the feature doc The Last Race.

Episode #23

Find out how one community on Long Island is trying to hold on to its past while staving off developers.

It's my creative effort to provide the audience with a singular emphatic experience as opposed to what documentaries typically do, which is give you information. I tried to have the audience become active participants and witnesses to the spirit of this place, the Raceway, and I hope they explore questions of blue collar American identity.

In this 60-Second Gallery, discover the work of visual artist and photographer Michael Dweck through his own words.

Whether he’s submerged in a Plexiglas box 40 feet underwater, or hanging onto the hood of a car on Havana’s busiest road, visual artist and photographer Michael Dweck has always found a new angle from which to document life.

We agreed this was going to be a cinematic portrait of a specific place, and the shots had to be either magical or mysterious. If they didn't meet that prerequisite, they didn't make the film. Another requirement was that there could be no repetition. We'd need to have moments of silence to breath, to stay, and to not cut a lot. If we had cuts, you wouldn't have time to observe this very particular world.

Radio interview with THE LAST RACE Director Michael Dweck

Listen to full interview

The director, Michael Dweck, is a fine art photographer, and we had been talking about collaborating on a project together for some time. He came to me with the idea of creating a film about a small stock car race track that was the last vestige of the Long Island racing culture that he experienced as a child.

On making his documentary debut with the story of the Riverhead Raceway in Long Island, the last of its kind.

Ethan interviews Director Michael Dweck of THE LAST RACE, a Sundance Film Festival documentary about Riverhead Raceway. For decades, this track has hosted showdowns between local residents in Mad Max style vehicles. Dozens of quarter-mile tracks just like that used to exist on Long Island - but now Riverhead is the last. 

Sundance Film Festival 2018 - U.S. Documentary Competition: The Last Race

Meet Michael Dweck, director of The Last Race, which is playing in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Intrigued and encapsulated by the pure love of surf and beach-life of the community that he so often frequented, Dweck’s book is a visual representation of the inspiration that this fisherman’s town has had on his artistry and creative eye.

I’m really happy with the way the project came out… It was kind of my attempt to look back – ten years later – on timelessness, and dig through a lot of contradictory feelings about a certain place and/or a certain time.

Photographer Michael Dweck has captured the charm of Montauk, N.Y. for the past 40 years, and is the first living American artist to have a solo exhibition in Cuba. He joins Tanya Rivero to discuss his enduring love affair with Montauk.

In the context of my work, memory is almost a currency. It’s what allows you entry into the endangered societies that my narratives grow out of. 

I saw something magical, an enclave based in paradise. I saw the water, the girls. There was a certain romance and fraternity, and I idealized it. That’s what it’s all about when you’re young.

Montauk will never be Montauk again (R.I.P to the East Deck, Salivar's, Johnny's Tackle, et. al), but it will never be anything else either.

I get to work in a medium that provokes and teaches in inexplicable ways. Like Whitman says (another Long Island guy, actually) “I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes;/ We convince by our presence.” That, to me, is art.

Interview with Michael Dweck, where he discusses the inspiration behind his Mermaids series and the intricacies of photographing underwater.

I think it's important to remember that "Habana Libre" doesn't depict Cuba, nor Havana, but a group of people in the city, in the country — my ideal vision. It's no different than the photographs that come out of Fashion Week in New York. They depict a very small subset of a very large and complex society.

I think it's important to note again that Habana Libre wasn't assembled as propaganda or counter-propaganda or anything in between. It doesn't represent its photographer's point, so much as his point-of-view; my vision of Cuba and no one else's. It represents an island -- or my idea of one -- ripe with seduction, mystery, sensuality and, yes, a little danger.

US photographer Michael Dweck's Habana Libre exhibition opens

There’s always a mixture of reasons that bring you to a particular place – for me, beauty is always a factor. In that sense – taken apart from political or social ideas – Cuba has the same draws as other islands in the Caribbean – Jamaica or the Virgin Islands or Antigua. The beaches are stunning, the people are beautiful. It’s just a great place to visit.

We’re dealing with people living buoyant, cinematic lives and I want the audience to share in that, feed on it. A single photo won’t borrow all the corners of that cube and give it away in two dimensions. But I think a book like this that doesn’t treat itself like “just a photobook” and whose images and narratives refuse to treat their subjects like “subjects” can go further in making its points, whatever island they may reference.

Dweck’s new book, Habana Libre, reveals a secretive collective of friends based in the country's capital, making work that treads a fine line between conceptual and subversive, yet is not seen as rebellious by the authorities.

Gregory Kershaw interviews his long time friend Michael Dweck about what inspires him, his method and his work.

Looking back, I think my first trip to Havana was like walking into a nightclub – and actually connecting with that group was like picking up a woman at the bar. You see a confident, sexy woman across the dance floor. You catch her eye. You look one another over. You flirt. And, in my case, you stay together for a while and have some fun.