Orgosolo lies in the Barbagia, the granite and oak-covered interior of Sardinia, a country of shepherds long known for its independence and for a reputation of banditry that the outside world enjoyed exaggerating. From the late 1960s, its walls began to be painted. Murals spread across house fronts, garage doors and retaining walls, dealing with land rights, emigration, the condition of shepherds, the wars of the twentieth century and the struggles of peoples elsewhere in the world, in a graphic language that borrows from Picasso, from political poster art and from popular illustration. Several hundred now cover the village, repainted and added to over the decades. Filmed in 4K, the programme reads the murals as a collective archive and places them in their setting: mountain pastures, sheepfolds, festivals and costumes of a community that has kept its language and its own way of telling its story.
