The Truffle Hunters: Documentary on Italy's dying art

These Italian men hold an important secret

Courtesy: Sony Pictures Classics

How to discover this

The white Alba truffle

A new documentary unearths their story

The Alba Truffle is one of the most expensive ingredients in the world

It only grows on the roots of tall oak trees in the forests of Piedmont, Italy

CO-DIRECTOR, MICHAEL DWECK, SAYING:

"There's a handful of these men in our film that are between 80 and 90 years old that can find this truffle, them and their dogs and the dogs have to be trained for four years before they can find these things, but it's kind of a really unique fairytale type community that has not been… that doesn't seem part of this modern world in many ways."

The film has been shortlisted for Best Documentary at the Oscars

"To us, it felt like they were paintings. Every one of them felt very much like a Renaissance painting. We would only shoot when the light was right. We took our time. It took a lot of patience. We didn't have a story going into this. This wasn't a story about Carlo's life, about him having to retire, it wasn't a story about Angelo complaining to the government about globalization, it wasn't. We had no story. We just knew this place enchanted us and we wanted to spend as much time as we could and then once we realized there was such a mystery and charm to this world, we decided to just film it."