12/08/2026 - The director talks about his movie, centred on three very different families who come together and clash around an impossible love story that transcends space and time

(© Locarno Film Festival/Ti-Press)

Italian director Salvatore Mereu talks about his latest film, Wandering Trees, presented in the International Competition of the Locarno Film Festival.

Cineuropa: Wandering Trees is a movie that gradually leads the viewer from a realistic dimension to a more dreamlike and fantastical one. How did you construct this shift?
Salvatore Mereu: I tried to instil that fantastical dimension, which is also present in Alberto Capitta’s novel, already in the first part of the film. If you think about it, the story begins with a scene in which a little sow is operated on: it isn’t exactly something that belongs to everyday life. So right from the outset, you’re stepping into a dimension that is, at the very least, unusual. I kept scattering this fantastical component through some of the characters as well. I’m thinking, for example, of Maddalena, when she leans out of the window of Ernesto’s room and sees the trees moving. We don’t know whether she really believes Ernesto’s words, but that’s already a moment when reality begins to open up towards something else. I thought it was important for the turn towards a more fantastical dimension not to come like an abrupt swerve, leaving the viewer disorientated. The challenge faced by the film was precisely this: to make two different dimensions co-exist.

What, then, drew you to this story?
While I was preparing my previous film, Assandira, which also told a love story but in a darker, almost unhealthy vein, I read this book. And I saw in it a love story as the Provençals might have told it. I told myself it could be the B-side of a hypothetical record featuring two representations of love - even though, in the film, the love story somehow remains beneath the surface because at the centre of it are the events involving these three families. I put that idea aside for a while, and when I came back to it, I once again had the feeling I was dealing with a story that deserved to be brought to the screen.

The film is surprisingly hard to place in time. There aren’t many markers beyond the calendar at the beginning that seems to indicate 1992-1993. Was that a deliberate choice?
Yes. There’s another reference, if we look carefully: when Ernesto is older, five or six years later, so in around 1999-2000, he goes into the city and meets Emilio under the arcades. He walks past a small cinema, and you can see the poster for The Son’s Room by Nanni Moretti. But the story is meant, in some way, not to be located anywhere recognisable. In my previous movies, there was a very high degree of recognisability of my homeland, conveyed by the language, the places and all of those elements that made Sardinia immediately identifiable. Here, instead, as also happened in the novel, I chose to make that aspect blurry. I wanted everyone to be able to recognise themselves in that place. It’s a choice that also comes from the fairy-tale dimension of the story; I wanted that place to be everyone’s, a landscape of the soul, rather than an immediately recognisable landscape. So yes, your observation is correct: there was a specific desire not to anchor the story too much, either in time or in space.

On the subject of mysteries, can you tell us more about that fantastical place called “I bambini”, where the protagonist takes refuge?
It’s hard to provide a single explanation, and perhaps it wouldn’t even be right to do so. Trying to explain everything risks limiting the story’s various interpretations. Who, then, are these children? Everyone can read them differently. Perhaps they are the humiliated, the wronged children. Perhaps they are those who have not yet found their place in the world, those who are considered different, those we struggle to accept. Or perhaps they are simply those to whom we have not yet guaranteed a future. It is therefore a very broad and symbolic community.

You spoke about Provençal love and courtly love. It seems the film really has elements of that: ultimately, the fairy tale imposes rules that the viewer must accept.
From that point of view, an ideal touchstone for me was The Romance of Astrea and Celadon by Éric Rohmer. It’s an extraordinary, beautiful film, and it served as a reference. Then, of course, there are other role models, but that Rohmer movie was certainly important for me.

Let's finish by talking about the animals, which have a very strong presence in the film. How did you work with them, especially in the first part?
I have built up filmmaking experience that has shaped me a great deal. I have often portrayed the lives of shepherds, and so animals have always been part of my stories. I have learned, through experience, how to tackle the difficulties involved in working with them. Naturally, we had a specialist, capable of training them and working with them. But then, many of the animals you see in the film - such as the horse, the deer and the little sow - are not real.

(Translated from Italian)