While continuing its tour in Italian cinemas, Bestiari, Erbari, Lapidari (Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries) is now receiving the important recognition from the National Union of Italian Film Critics, who designate it as Film of the Critics.

Divided into three acts, each dealing with a single subject (animals, plants, stones), Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries is a documentary-encyclopedia tribute to those “unknown” and in some ways alien worlds, made of animals, plants, and minerals, which we too often take for granted, but with which we should be in constant dialogue since they constitute the essential part of our existence on planet Earth.

By filming gestures, words, and movements, directors Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti invite the viewer to reflect on their position in the world: Bestiaries is a found-footage on how and why cinema has obsessively represented animals; Herbaria is a poetic observational documentary inside the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua; Lapidaries, finally, is an industrial film on the transformation of stone into collective memory.

Closely connected to each other, the acts of the film draw a unique dramaturgical development through three different staging devices. Each act is a tribute to a specific genre of documentary cinema. For film critics, it’s “A film beyond man and about how man looks.” And for this very reason, “a crucial film.”

“The Botanical Garden of Padua is at the origin of all botanical gardens in the world and represents the cradle of science, scientific exchanges, and the understanding of the relationships between nature and culture. We were born to observe and study the plant world in real life, and Herbaria is an authentic journey, through the free gaze of the directors, into the motivations of our daily work. Participation in Herbaria is a testimony of our act of love for a precious asset for all of Humanity which, above all else, is a complex and fascinating living organism, to be studied, preserved, and enhanced for future generations.” – Tomas Morosinotto, prefect of the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua.