The proliferation of documentaries on streaming services makes it difficult to choose what to watch. Each month, we select three nonfiction films — classics, overlooked recent docs and more — that will reward your time.
‘The Truffle Hunters’ (2021)
Stream it on Starz. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home and Google Play.
If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be a dog bounding through the woods — leaves crunching under paw; tongue exposed to the elements; nose on the trail of a really good scent — there is a documentary that can oblige. For a couple of moments in “The Truffle Hunters,” the directors, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, used a mini camera harness to capture the world from a canine point of view. True, the dog camera constitutes only a small portion of the film. But when one of those dogs does a head shake, the movie practically dares you not to be charmed.
The film’s heroes aren’t just the dogs but their owners, who make their livings foraging for high-priced mushrooms in a time-honored, artisanal fashion. These men include Carlo, who enjoys searching for truffles at night (he likes the sound of the owl), despite protests from his wife, who worries that he’ll hurt himself, since he is now in his late 80s. Angelo, on the other hand, has decided that he’s had enough, and he decides to put his reasons for quitting on paper. “There are too many greedy people,” he explains, shortly before starting to tap on a typewriter. “They don’t do it for fun or to play with their dogs or to spend some time in nature.” What we see of Sergio, a shaggy-maned truffle hunter and sometime drummer who strives to protect his dogs from poisoned bait, illustrates Angelo’s point. Picking truffles has become a dirty business.
But the emotional core of the movie, shot in the Piedmont region of Italy, belongs to Aurelio and his dog, Birba, who share a relationship as close as any between humans. (Aurelio and Birba are even seen splitting their food.) We hear that Angelo may be the best truffle hunter of them all, but he has no wife and no children, and he refuses to divulge his secret spots. “We can go truffle hunting, but in your places or in a place that neither of us knows,” he tells a man trying to get him to spill the beans. He hopes to find what he calls a “wild woman” who can take care of Birba after he dies.
