Film
The Truffle Hunters
A slow, gorgeously shot documentary about the last old men of Piedmont who still hunt white truffles by lamplight with their dogs, guarding secret forest routes like state secrets. It's funny, melancholic, and shot like a series of Dutch paintings — more a mood and a way of life than a story. Good for anyone who wants cinema, not content.
If you liked this
Chef's Table2015
Same reverence for obsessive craftspeople, same painterly cinematography turning food into something almost holy. Each episode is a small character study of someone who has given their life to one narrow, strange pursuit.
But The Netflix gloss and swelling music are a world away from the truffle hunters' dry, unsentimental humour.

Honeyland2019
A Macedonian beekeeper clings to an ancient way of harvesting honey as modernity closes in — same elegy for a vanishing rural craft, same extraordinary access to a hidden world.
But Far bleaker and more confrontational; there's real cruelty and hardship here, not gentle whimsy.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi2011
An eighty-something master obsessed with a single, perfect thing — the truffle hunters' fixation on a fungus mirrored in Jiro's fixation on rice and fish. Both are quiet studies in lifelong devotion.
But Cooler and more austere in tone; Jiro's world is disciplined and formal where the truffle hunters are chaotic and warm.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Uncut Gems2019
Both are about a scarce natural commodity that turns ordinary men into gamblers, and about the anxious, protective economy that grows up around something the rich will pay absurdly for.
A jeweller mortgages everything on the promise of one perfect, rare object and the buyers circling it — same fever, same secretive middlemen, same sense that a natural treasure drives people slightly mad.
But Frantic, abrasive, and stressful by design — the opposite of the truffle film's unhurried calm.

More like this (8)
Sweetgrass2009
No narration, no interviews — just Montana shepherds and their flock on a punishing final drive through the mountains. If you loved the wordless, observational stretches of the truffle film, this goes further.
But Almost entirely dialogue-free and unhurried; it demands patience the truffle film only occasionally asks for.

Grizzly Man2005
Herzog's portrait of a man who loved wild animals past the point of sense — another story of devotion to the natural world that borders on delusion, shot through with dark comedy.
But Much darker; this one ends in tragedy, not gentle melancholy.

Somm2013
Sommeliers cramming obsessively for a brutal exam, chasing mastery of another intangible, expensive, faintly ridiculous substance. Similar fascination with people who've organised their whole lives around taste and terroir.
But More talky and competitive, closer to a sports documentary than a meditation.

The Biggest Little Farm2019no page yet
A couple rebuilding a farm with old-fashioned, stubborn methods against modern agriculture — that same tension between an older, slower relationship with land and the world pressing in on it.
But Warmer and more triumphant in structure; lacks the truffle film's wry, unresolved sadness.
Kings of Pastry2009no page yet
French pastry chefs competing for an almost mythic title, hands trembling over sugar sculptures — another small, strange, fiercely guarded craft world captured with real affection.
But Lighter and more comic; the stakes are professional pride, not survival of a way of life.
Babette's Feast1987
A Danish fable about a lavish meal transforming a dour village — if you loved the fairy-tale framing of the truffle hunt, this fictional cousin treats food with the same sense of grace and mystery.
But It's a scripted period drama, slow and religious in tone, not a documentary at all.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs1978no page yet
It's the ancestor: an earlier, harder-edged vision of the same disappearing Italian countryside and the people who refuse to leave it, made when that world was still ordinary rather than nearly extinct.
Ermanno Olmi's fictionalised portrait of Italian peasant farmers, shot with non-actors and real dialect, decades before this documentary's aesthetic — the same soil, the same fading agrarian world, filmed with the same patient tenderness.
But Three hours long, in old Bergamasque dialect, and made in a completely different, much harder era for Italian rural life.
Grey Gardens1976
Both are documentaries about proud, insular people clinging to a private world that's visibly disappearing — one shot like a painting, the other shot like an intrusion, showing how differently a camera can love its subjects.
Two eccentric, once-grand women rattling around a decaying East Hampton mansion, filmed with raw, unstaged verite intimacy — a wholly different documentary register but the same fascination with people who've built a whole world around themselves.
But Grittier, sadder, and far less picturesque; there's no painterly beauty softening the decline here.

People
Cast
BirbaThe Truffle Hunting Dog
Directing
- Gregory KershawDirector
- Michael DweckDirector
Production
- Cecilia LuppiAssociate Producer
- Hallee AdelmanAssociate Producer
- Ivy HermanAssociate Producer
- Letizia GuglielminoCo-Producer
- René Simon Cruz Jr.Co-Producer
- Adam LewisExecutive Producer
- Bruce HeavinExecutive Producer
- Cameron O'ReillyExecutive Producer
- Christos V. KonstantakopoulosExecutive Producer
- Geralyn White DreyfousExecutive Producer
- Jackie Kelman BisbeeExecutive Producer
- Jamie WolfExecutive Producer
- Jim SwartzExecutive Producer
- Lance AcordExecutive Producer
- Leslie BerrimanExecutive Producer
- Luca GuadagninoExecutive Producer
- Lynda WeinmanExecutive Producer
- Matthew PerniciaroExecutive Producer
- Melony LewisExecutive Producer
- Michael ShermanExecutive Producer
- Nion McEvoyExecutive Producer
- Patty QuillinExecutive Producer
- Regina K. ScullyExecutive Producer
- Sam BisbeeExecutive Producer
- Susan SwartzExecutive Producer
- Wendy NeuExecutive Producer
- Gregory KershawProducer
- Michael DweckProducer