The Truffle Hunters, co-directed and produced by alumnus Gregory Kershaw '11, received a warm reception at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Following its success, the documentary was then acquired by Sony Pictures Classic to receive a theatrical release with the exact release date still to be set. According to Deadline, “the documentary went for $1.5 million in a worldwide rights deal, with several distributors bidding.”
The Truffle Hunters is set deep in the forests of Northern Italy where the prized white Alba truffle resides. Desired by the wealthiest patrons in the world, it remains a pungent but rarified mystery. It cannot be cultivated or found, even by the most resourceful of modern excavators. The only souls on Earth who know how to dig it up are a tiny circle of canines and their silver-haired human companions—Italian elders with walking sticks and devilish senses of humor—who only scour for the truffle at night so as not to leave any clues for others.
Sony Pictures Classics is an autonomous division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in January 1992 that distributes, produces and acquires independent films from the United States and around the world.
Gregory Kershaw is a documentary and narrative filmmaker whose work explores the complexity and beauty of humans and their planet. He was recently a producer and the director of photography on The Last Race. In 2019, he was a Sundance Institute Catalyst Forum fellow and Music and Sound Design Lab fellow. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA film-directing program.
