The Tree of Wooden Clogs

“When the family of man was still—a family.”

Batistì (Luigi Ornaghi) and his wife Batistina (Francesca Moriggi) farm someone else's land in Lombardy, and when the priest says their son Minec (Omar Brignoli) should go to school, they agree, though it costs them his work in the fields. Ermanno Olmi cast actual farmers and local people in the cascina. The film stays with their ordinary days, and the idea underneath is plain: a poor family's small choices carry the weight of its whole future.