Director Giovanni Donfrancesco

Countries France, Italy

Duration 88 min

Synopsis
The Stone River traces the destiny of European stone workers who, at the beginning of the 20th century, crossed the ocean to settle in the town of Barre, Vermont, where they were opening the biggest granite quarries in the world. Within a few years, most of them were decimated by silicosis. At the end of the 30s the inhabitants of Barre were interviewed by some writers sent by the Roosevelt administration to depict a portrait of America during the Great Depression. For the movie, the inhabitants living in Barre today accepted to read out the the texts of the interviews given by their ancestors back in the 30s. Through their voice, in a troubling junction between past and present, the film brings back to life their stories made of social battles, diseases and deaths, anarchist utopia, tragedy and hope. In an original visual style and storytelling, the film recounts the tragic epic of an entire community of emigrants engaged in the everlasting and titanic struggle against stone.