Fondazione Baruchello, on Saturday 16th at 6:30 p.m., Via del Vascello 35, Rome, presents the documentary Il toro e la Madonna (2025) by Gianni Nunno and Claudio Sagliocco. The screening will be followed by a roundtable discussion with the directors, alongside Mattia Cucurullo, Bruno Di Marino, Irene Quarantini, Carla Subrizi, Roberta Tucci, and Leandro Ventura, accompanied by poetry readings.
The documentary traces the celebrations held on the day of the Madonna della Neve, interwoven with the voices of the inhabitants of Bacugno, a small village in the Rieti hinterland with fewer than one hundred residents. Each year, ancient rites are renewd here, which may be linked to the pre-Christian cult of the deity Vacuna. The climax of the celebration is marked by a solemn and enigmatic event: a bull is led down from the mountain to kneel before the effigy of the Virgin Mary, a gesture whose origins are lost in time, suspended between myth and collective memory.
Presented at the RAM (Rovereto – Archeologia – Memorie) Film Festival in 2025, as well as at Firenze Archeofilm and Borgo Filmfest in 2026, the documentary represents the first attempt to document the tradition in its entirety. Initiated in 2021, the project aims to preserve this cultural memory in dialogue with the community that keeps it alive, as well as with the history and myths that animate it.