Bandits of Orgosolo

Vittorio De Seta's 1961 Italian film is set in the Orgosolo region of Sardinia and was made entirely with local shepherds. Michele, a shepherd implicated in the killing of a policeman, is innocent; but distrusting the courts and fearing he will lose his flock while awaiting trial, he does not give himself up. He flees into the mountains, and the longer he runs the more genuinely a bandit he becomes. De Seta had made ten short documentaries between 1954 and 1959, and this first feature carries that observational eye into fiction. None of the performers are professional and all come from the region; the Sardinian dialect is used as it is. What the film shows is how crime is produced where the law does not reach. It won the prize for best first film at the Venice Film Festival. Who it's for: viewers interested in late Italian neorealism and ethnographic fiction. Who it's not for: anyone wanting dramatic incident and pace, or avoiding scenes of animals dying.