The Truffle Hunters made the Academy Documentary Shortlist.

Dear friends,

We  are thrilled with the recent news that The Truffle Hunters made the  Academy Documentary Shortlist. It would be an immense honor in any year,  and to be among the extraordinary documentaries that were selected this  year is astonishing.

The  Truffle Hunters will be in theaters on March 5th. We would like to  proclaim an especially huge thank you to all our Executive Producers who  have continued to support the film. Your generosity has allowed us to  launch our awards campaign and the Friends of The Truffle Hunters  Conservation Program, which has enabled truffle hunters to acquire and  forever protect the forests where we filmed. We also want to thank our  PR crew that has passionately and tirelessly shared the film with all  the right people. And, of course, the Sony Pictures Classics team who  set the highest sights for this film from the start.

We  are so grateful for all of our new friends who have generously shared  their time to host screenings and tell their friends about the film. You  are now part of Team Truffle. Welcome to the family.

Over  the past months, we’ve done countless zoom interviews—some for press  outlets, some for festivals, and others for award voters. We’ve been  asked many questions, yet, it always comes back to the question of why  we made this film. In our answers, we’ve talked about documenting a  disappearing culture, exploring the human consequences of climate  change, and questioning the values of a global consumer culture led by  digital technology. Indeed, that is all there, but underneath it all,  there is a simpler answer at the core of what we do.

We  are obsessed with finding places in the world that have maintained a  continuity with the past, held onto their local traditions, protected  the soul of their culture, and resisted the digitized, plasticized pull  of global consumer culture. We are drawn to these places because they  pulse with a different energy. They invigorate us, inspire us, and  compel us to go deeper.

When  we entered this magical part of Northern Italy, we found ourselves  enchanted by a group of people and a place that seemed to be more  fairytale than reality. We witnessed lives that were bubbling with  mirth, nested in deep cultural meaning, and lived to their full  potential. We made the film because we wanted to share what we felt in  the presence of this magnificence with our audience. We wanted the joy  that we were privileged to be a part of to emanate from the screen, and  we hoped that it would lift our audience as it had lifted us. We spent  years exploring, letting the place and the spirit of its people wash  over us. We were reaching for something deeper than empirical facts, a  subjective truth. A knowledge rooted in emotion and feeling that could  only be shared through cinema.

As  the film has started to make its way to audiences worldwide, we’ve felt  that happening. In the darkest moments of this past year, people told  us that the film was an escape. They told us it brought them hope and  that it made them think about the potential to reach beyond the  boundaries of their daily lives. Somehow, a little film about old men  who quietly search for a rare underground fungus has been embraced by a  major distributor and is now on the Academy shortlist. All that matters  to us because it means that we found an audience, and that audience  might, for a moment, be transported into the joyous world we witnessed  and experience the possibility of a world filled with magic and mystery.

That is why we made The Truffle Hunters.

Warmest,

Gregory and Michael