Cristallo di rocca - Una storia di Natale (1999)

On a glacier in the Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy, the perfectly preserved body of a man is found. Taken to the nearby village of Gschaid, the body is identified by two elderly people, Sanna and her brother Corrado, who recognize Martin, a local man who disappeared many decades earlier. The discovery brings back to Sanna the circumstances of his disappearance, in which she and Corrado were involved during Christmas nearly seventy years before. She therefore decides to tell the story to her family, who have come to spend the Christmas holidays with her. 1933. A fierce rivalry, going back centuries, existed between the village of Gschaid and the nearby village of Millsdorf. The latest cause of disagreement was the construction of a large dam: the people of Millsdorf were convinced it would bring wealth and progress, while the people of Gschaid responded by blowing up the dam under construction. They declared that the river had been stolen from them and that this would impoverish them by causing serious problems for livestock farming. Joseph, the father of Sanna and Corrado, and their grandfather Thomas were on bad terms. Although both were natives of Gschaid, Thomas could not accept that his son had married Gerda, a resident of the rival village and, moreover, the daughter of the man who had ordered the dam to be built. Since the two families were unwilling to meet, Sanna and Corrado went from one village to the other on their own to visit their grandparents. Martin, a mountain guide whose mother was from Gschaid and whose father was from Millsdorf, was indifferent to the feud between the two villages and the stubbornness of their inhabitants. He got along with people on both sides, and especially with the two little siblings. Elias, by contrast, was a belligerent man from Millsdorf who would stir people up to violence. He not only poisoned Joseph’s cows, but also brought down a bridge and destroyed a wayside shrine that served as a road marker. On Christmas Eve, as Sanna and Corrado were returning home after visiting their maternal grandparents, they were caught in a snowstorm and lost their way, partly because the road sign had been destroyed. Their family grew alarmed, and for the first time the two villages set aside their grievances, joining forces to search for the missing siblings. The next morning, Martin, who had set out ahead of everyone else to look for the children, found Sanna and Corrado. Together they reached the villagers, who in the meantime had found Elias on the verge of death and forgiven him after he regretted his actions. They welcomed the children joyfully, but suddenly everyone realized Martin was missing. Sadly, he died shortly afterward, falling into a crevasse. Don Anselmo then asked the people of both villages to exchange a sign of peace in memory of their brave friend, who had died so tragically. That same evening, after Sanna finishes telling the story, the people of Gschaid and Millsdorf go together to Christmas Mass at the church in Gschaid. The final scene shows that this very gesture was what, decades earlier, marked the beginning of peace between the two villages, to the great joy of the parish priest.