L’ultimo cacciatore

The last hunter
Director
Marco Leopardi
Country
Italy
Year
2010
Genre
Documentary
Scriptwriters
Roberta Cortella
Production
Terra SRL [IT]

Storyline

Giuseppe is a young Sicilian man, the last in the line of the millennium old tradition of swordfish harpooning which is still performed in the Strait of Messina. Fathers have handed down this technique to their sons for centuries so Giuseppe’s father wants him to launch the harpoon in the next hunting season. For a boy of the Strait killing the swordfish is a sort of initiation that marks his belonging to a family, it is a challenge with oneself and with the sea. But Giuseppe is the emblem that times are changing. Soon he will graduate in Natural Sciences with a research on the swordfish, his greatest passion from when he was a child. Giuseppe isn’t against his father’s job that has always supported his family, but even if he himself belongs to that world, he doesn’t feel like shooting with his own hands the creature he has always been fascinated by. He is not sure whether he wants to violate that nature that in fact he would like to respect. On the other hand he doesn’t want to disappoint his father. Giuseppe’s dilemma is the dilemma of our times, between tradition and science, between one’s roots and one’s future expectations; it’s the eternal conflict between fathers and sons, it’s the struggle of a tradition that is disappearing but it’s mainly the challenge of a boy who is becoming aware of the value of life. In his hands he feels the weight of the lethal harpoon, but also the responsibility of a millennium-old tradition which with him risks disappearing for ever.

Festivals & Academy awards and others

Medimed 2011
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