Poetic, philosophical, and purely cinematic, Michelangelo Frammartino's film gazes near-wordlessly upon only a few subjects: an elderly shepherd, a kid goat, a tall fir tree, a charcoal oven. From these simple components of life in Calabria unfurls a story of startling depth, a transcendent meditation on the rhythms of life, growth, change, and death in the natural world. Straightforward, sometimes funny, sometimes dark and poignant, the scenes are imbued with a certain lightness of being as if Frammartino is asking the audience to gently conspire with him, to breathe together, to take each scene as it comes – whether it be a nearly abstracted image of a burning charcoal heap, or a wry visual comedy set-piece involving a dog, a truck, and a Passion Play.