The Axe

Vitoria is a peasant woman from the mountains. She is strong-willed. Her husband Nechifor is a shepherd. Nechifor leaves home to buy sheep. After that no word comes from him. Vitoria decides to look for him. She walks back the road he took, step by step. Along the way she asks and she listens. In the end she learns what became of him. The two shepherds who set out with him confess to the crime. The account is built on that search. The film was adapted from the novel of the same name by Mihail Sadoveanu. Margarita Lozano and Folco Lulli take the leads, with Sidonia Manolache and Florin Scărlătescu also in the cast, in Mircea Mureșan’s Romanian and Italian coproduction of 1969.