Karst

The story

The poignant short documentary film Karst, the directorial debut of the "border" director Franco Giraldi, is dedicated to his homeland. Although he grew up in Trieste, he was born in the Karst hinterland, in Komen. Giuseppe Pinori - later the cinematographer for Nanni Moretti, Marco Tullio Giordana, and the Taviani brothers - captures the arduous daily work of fishermen and farmers in the small village of Santa Croce/Sveti Križ through unforgettable images. This village, squeezed between Tito's Yugoslavia and the slopes overlooking the Gulf of Trieste, is rapidly declining. Callisto Cosulich, an established critic from Trieste who also emigrated to Rome, contributed the connecting text. This precious lyrical short film, shot during the Christmas holidays of 1959, heralds the director's poetic style in later years and tells us about a land that is not generous to its people and their work, nestled between the sea and the sky, albeit far from the perception we have of it today.