← Back

The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Original title: L'albero degli zoccoli · Turkish title: Nalın Ağacı

“When the family of man was still—a family.”

1978 · 3 h 6 min
Directed by Ermanno Olmi · Italy · Italian Neorealism and After
DramaHistory

Cast

Luigi Ornaghi Francesca Moriggi Omar Brignoli

Credits

Written by: Ermanno Olmi

Plot

Over a year in the 1890s, several peasant families on a farm in Lombardy work for the landowner, grow crops and celebrate marriages and births. When one father cuts down a tree to make a pair of clogs for his son, there are consequences. Ermanno Olmi's 1978 film, shot with non-professional local actors in dialect, is a beautiful and gently rhythmic portrait of rural life, and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Sinekatalog’s take

Ermanno Olmi's quiet epic of Lombard peasants is a patient, non-professional portrait of rural life. Slow and beautiful, with its famous clog-making incident, it won the Palme d'Or and is deeply humane.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Awards

Ratings

IMDb: 7.8 / 10 (9,563 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.

If you liked this

Picked by director, genre, era and shared cast. Titles only, no spoilers.