Yesterday we were invited to a deeply human story: the journey of a man who, by walking and trekking , learns again how to live—and who finds happiness in the quiet folds of the Garfagnana.

The documentary. screened yesterday afternoon in the parish hall of Villa, Bagni di Lucca, is titled ‘Il Viandante’ (The Wayfarer). It’s based on Salvatore Liggeri’s book A Due Passi dal Tibet and was written and directed by Fabrizio Baroni. The film gathers the voices and faces of the local landscape: Giacomo Giustizieri, Aurora Santini, Cassandra from Granaiola, Marco Rigali, Marcella Barsotti, Giuseppe Berni, and a Dutch couple who chose Lugliano as their home, Dirk Blaauw and Stephanie Drenth.

This is not a documentary you simply watch—it is one you enter, absorb, and carry with you.

Born in Sicily, raised in Germany, and now living with his wife in a small village of the Garfagnana, Salvatore Liggeri arrived in this land almost by accident. “A choice that seemed predestined,” say Roberta Nerici and Ivano Amadei of Crasciana, promoters of the group ‘I Sentieri Ritrovati’, dedicated to rediscovering ancient paths. “Yet it was precisely here that he found meaning. This is a story of searching, of travel, of rebirth. Salvatore didn’t walk just to arrive somewhere—he walked to find himself.”

Both book and film open onto a world of towering mountains, paths swallowed by green, villages where time loosens its grip, and encounters shaped by generosity: a glass of wine, a silent smile, hands roughened by work and weather that speak without words. Salvatore meets people with humility and respect, always ready to listen, always ready to learn.
Marri of the CAI section of Barga recalls one walk with him: “That day was special not only for how far we walked, but for what we shared. In Salvatore I recognized something that unites us: the desire to walk not only with our feet, but with our hearts.”

“The film tells my journey,” says Liggeri, “through the Garfagnana and other parts of Tuscany. I speak about life in all its forms, about how to live—and also about death, about the fear of facing it and trying to understand what still remains taboo.”

The story begins in 2017. After separating from his partner and being unable to see his daughter, Salvatore sinks into depression and alcoholism. Exhausted and broken, he decides to leave and crosses Europe on foot. Years of wandering follow, until he reaches a Tibetan monastery and meets people who change his life—among them Sara, the woman he will love, and Denise, a dear friend he will later lose.

At Denise’s invitation, Salvatore comes to the Garfagnana. Here he encounters people who teach him forgotten values. Slowly he is reborn: he learns a different rhythm of living, and with it, a new form of happiness. After years of confusion and pain, he finds harmony at last. ‘Il Viandante: joins the great tradition of journey-films told as inner pilgrimages, reminiscent of works like Buñuel’s ‘The Milky Way,’ where the path becomes a mirror of the soul.

Today Liggeri lives with Sara in Bolognana. He speaks of the Serchio Valley and the Apuan Alps with tenderness, saying that for the first time in his life he truly feels at home. The film opens in Val di Luce, then moves through Florence and Lunigiana, but its heart beats in the Garfagnana, where most of it was filmed.

The photography is by Silvia Talassi; panoramic and drone footage by High Sky Record of Melissa Liggeri. Music is by Alex Gasperini, graphics by rapper Sichze and singer-songwriter Nicholas Carannante.

Introduced by Roberto Ragghianti, the film was screened to a packed hall and received with warm applause. I was struck by the beauty of the images—so many places I recognized with affection—and by the immediacy of the encounters that shape our wandering hero’s path.

The film is rich with extraordinary characters and unforgettable places, each encounter revealing something essential about life in these remote and beautiful parts. More than a story, it is a lesson: it teaches us to look more carefully, to listen more deeply, and to recognize how much wisdom can be found in simple lives and quiet places. By the end, we felt changed — more aware, more grateful, and more connected to a land and a people who have so much to teach us.

I hope that ‘Il Viandante’ will soon be shown more widely, with subtitles, so that those beyond Italy too can walk this road—and perhaps, in walking it, find something of themselves.