Inspired by Antonio Cossu’s short story collection Il vento e altri racconti (‘The Wind and other stories’), “Bentu” (Sardinian for ‘wind’) is the story of intergenerational exchange, of man challenging nature, and – writes Mereu in the director’s notes – “a story of friendship, of the human relationship between elderly Raffaele and the young Angelino, who matures through his training and initiation. Their rapport is lived in a condition of total isolation, in a place and at a time when the passage of a thresher is saluted as would the passage of a comet.”
Raffaele is a Sardinian farmer who just finished his harvest. It will need to last a full year. He has been sleeping in the fields for days, in isolation, anxiously waiting for wind, which will help him with threshing. The wind won’t show up, though, and only a boy, Angelino, ventures into the field to visit Raffaele. Angelino’s dream is to ride Raffaele’s mare, and he just cannot wait…