Ermanno Olmi is one of cinema's great, unsung filmmakers. Emerging onto the Italian art film scene just as the last canonical neo-realist movies were released in the late 1950s and early 1960s, several of Olmi's films, including Il Posto (1961), The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) and The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988), won top prizes at Cannes and Venice. However, the majority of his work has remained unappreciated. This, the first English language book on Olmi, explores the director's style and evolving environmentalism, from his early, institutional short films, made while working at an Italian energy company, to his 19 feature films.