La Roya: la loi de la vallée

As winter takes over the European Arctic, it turns into an unrecognizable place, cold and dark. Throughout the polar night, the north feels removed from all human life, uninhabitable, just like the moon. And yet, it is home to people born in faraway lands. What has brought them here? What keeps them here, immersed in darkness?

As thousands of migrants attempt to cross the French-Italian border on foot through treacherous mountain routes, the state cracks down on the local communities that come to their aid in this revealing look at an unfolding human rights crisis.

From a human point of view, a mountain is a barrier and a place of passage. Mountains have always been natural frontiers between territories. Nuno Escudeiro collected stories in Briançon, in the French High Alps, and in the Susa Valley, in the western part of Piedmont, and to these he added home movies from the Superottimisti Archivo di Film di Famiglia.