The Aosta Valley is the most densely fortified valley in the Alps. Along the corridor that leads to the great passes, castles and towers follow one another on spurs and outcrops, each one built to watch a stretch of road, a bridge or a village. La Mothe belongs to this chain: a fortified site on its rock, and below it a settlement whose lanes, walls and roofs of slate follow the slope in the way mountain villages always have. The film observes the pair as a single organism — the fortress that gave the place its reason to exist, and the community that lived in its shadow, working terraces, meadows and woods through the harsh cycle of alpine seasons. Filmed in 4K, with aerial photography that reveals the relationship between the built site and the surrounding relief, the programme offers a portrait of the medieval Alps at the scale of one village.
