Ermanno Olmi

The Profile

Ermanno Olmi (1931–2018) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1978 for L'albero degli zoccoli and the Golden Lion at Venice in 1988 for La Leggenda Del Santo Bevitore. His films often blend documentary clarity with humanist, spiritual, and historical themes.

Founder of the Ipotesi Cinema workshop; frequently worked with non-professional actors; known for a poetic, realist style and meticulous attention to landscape and community.

Six reviews trace Olmi’s cinema from the trenches of WWI to the Po River banks and Renaissance battlefields. Themes of faith, community, and moral responsibility recur, alongside austere images and documentary clarity. Accolades and reverence surface around The Tree of Wooden Clogs, while Cento chiodi divides opinion. Overall, a portrait of a humanist director with a lyrical eye.