The demand for white truffles increases year after year, even as the supply decreases. Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s “The Truffle Hunters” about the eccentric Italians who, alongside their dogs, look for these Truffles year-round in the outskirts of Italian forests and villages, deserves to be the best documentary of 2021 — or is that 2020? Shuffling and reshuffling dates for this infectiously artful and amusing film, Sony Pictures Classics has both managed to make Dweck and Kershaw’s doc eligible for this April’s Oscar ceremony and, finally, given it a March 5th release date. Almost every frame in this beautifully realized film is shot like a painting. Set deep in the forests of Piedmont, Italy, the film follows six men, no younger than seventy and some in their 80s, hunting for the rare and expensive white Alba truffle—which to date has resisted all of modern science's efforts at cultivation. It’s a secret culture, passed on through generations and aided by the noses of their expertly-trained Truffle-sniffing dogs. That’s how they find the “gold,” dug deep in the ground. Living isolated, but resolute lives, there is no internet in this part of the world, just a community filled with great food, drinking and secrecy. The result is a strange, funny, charming and ultimately poignant account of aging. These men have dedicated their entire lives to not only finding these immaculate truffles, but refusing to sell out to the big businesses knocking at their doorsteps daily. Dwerck and Kershaw’s masterful compositions enhance the surreal nature of this mysteriously amusing world.
SCORE: A-