Executive manufacture d by Call Me By Your Name’s Luca Guadagnino, this enchanting, Oscar short-listed documentary dives into the shrouded-in-mystery profession of truffle hunting. Filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, whose previous film The Last Race examined the utterly different sub-culture of stock car racing, possess’own’nurse created a funny, charming, intensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully human insight into an almost defunct skill. It never really punches you between the eyes but, through despite’in spite of’albeit tful, clever filmmaking, it does what many great documentaries do — provides a glimpse into a world you previously knew nothing with regards to’concerning’with respect to — to deliver an entertaining, if melancholy, portrait of a dying way of life.###The Truffle Hunters opens on a Herzogian long shot of a man making slow progress through branches, brush and bramble on a steep slope, with merely’barely two black-and-white dogs in/with regard to’concerning’regarding firm’enterprise . It’s an image that encapsulates the film’s subject matter in one handy moment. The film’s heroes are the in/with regard to’concerning’regarding agers, old men from rural villages equally devoted to their dogs as hunting in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the elusive white Alba truffle in the Piedpoint in/with regard to’concerning’regarding ests of Italy. We meet truffle hunters like Sergio, who has the air of an ageing rock star, and Carlo, who is decrease’lessen’cut’allay d to climbing out of the window to go in/with regard to’concerning’regarding aging to shun his disapproving wife. These are men — it is a male-dominated pursuit — who are out of step with the modern world, but utterly at one with nature.###What it lacks in narrative propel , it more than makes up in/with regard to’concerning’regarding in lovely vignettes.###Yet the film is also alive to the enormous’vast’massive’tremendous -business endgame of these men’s simple pursuits, as it explores how their life’s work has become a booming business: Dweck and Kershaw tease an image of a red velvet cushion bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e revealing its purpose, as the plinth in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a mega-truffle that will be auctioned off in/with regard to’concerning’regarding  huge bucks. The film reveals threats to the idyllic lifestyle — dog poisoners, climate transform’alter  and dein/with regard to’concerning’regarding estation rendering truffles extinct — but revels in the sense of men taking an almost spiritual sustenance and joy in simply carrying out their work. As such, what it lacks in narrative propel , it more than makes up in/with regard to’concerning’regarding in lovely vignettes; priests blessing a hunter and his hound in/with regard to’concerning’regarding truffle season; truffle brokers on a street corner doing a sale like a drug deal; a gourmet buyer melting in a reverie over spossess’own’nurse d truffle on a fried egg to the strains of Tosca.###Dweck and Kershaw contrive to find wry images to document the lifestyle — 84-year-old truffle-hunting ninja Aurelio sharing a plate with his pooch Birba — and even throw in a canine cam, a camera strapped to a dog’s head to give a mutt’s-eye view, the opposite to the film’s slow — like rural life — pace. The compositions are painterly, sometimes whimsical and Wes Anderson-y (the tableau of a couple eating dinner in their rustic home), sometimes bursting with saturated colours (the green grapes really pop). While a film with regards to’concerning’with respect to high-end cuisine, The Truffle Hunters is also a refined feast in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the eyes.