The Truffle Hunters Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

The last guild award ceremony of this long protracted awards season went to the American Society of Cinematographers and they were in a “Mank” mood for the 2021 ASC Awards. Their premiere honor went to Erik Messerschmidt for his work on David Fincher‘s passion project.

It’s been a year since we went into lockdown and while things are slowly beginning to change with the release of the vaccine, many things remain the same, such as how we (don’t) socialize, which, as it has since the beginning, includes movie-going.

February is now the month for guild award nominations announcements. And while the SAG Awards will be the first big ball to drop on Thursday, the Producers Guild of America began the rollout of their yearly honors with the documentary category.

Despite a lack of theatrical distribution, 2020 has been another banner year for documentaries. It’s no surprise then that a number of acclaimed Oscar contenders didn’t make the cut for the prestigious IDA Documentary Awards.

“The Truffle Hunters” takes viewers deep in the forests of Northern Italy to watch as elderly men and their indispensable dogs participate in the tradition of sniffing out the elusive white Alba truffle. Beloved by gourmet chefs, the truffle’s rarity drives prices sky-high, even as the subjects of the film maintain the old ways of hunting, free of technology, relying on their own memories and a cranky sense of secrecy.

Septuagenarian men hunting for elusive Alba truffles in Italy may not sound all that exciting, but “The Truffle Hunters,” directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, comes with major pedigree. First off, the film premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival and then the doc was accepted to the Toronto International Film Festival, capping off a string of previous acceptances into the Cannes, Telluride, and New York Film Festivals.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired worldwide rights to “The Truffle Hunters” out of the Sundance Film Festival. The pact is for $1.5 million, according to an insider.