As part of the Cinemambiente festival in Turin, every year since 2015, a “lifetime achievement” award called Le Ghiande is given to an author who has «made ecology in a broad sense an essential element of their work», or has «expressed in their artistic journey a deep and original relationship with the environment, landscape, and nature».
Over time, the recognition has been awarded, among others, to Tiziano Fratus, Fabio Pusterla, Antonella Anedda, Matteo Righetto.
2023 is the year of Claudio Morandini, author of several novels, often set in mountainous locations, such as his most famous Neve, cane, piede (winner of the Premio Procida-Isola di Arturo-Elsa Morante in Italy, the Prix Lire en Poche in France, and second place at the John Florio Prize in Great Britain).
The jury, in awarding the prize to the Aosta writer, expressed the following motivation:
«In his novels, which range from gothic to crime, the environment is not a backdrop, but a fully-fledged character. It is a disturbing presence with its own will that mixes, entangles, and disrupts human intentions. They are stones that multiply in the living room and ice that reveals traces of crimes, sly animals, animated objects, and restless landscapes. In between, we: human beings bewildered by new and strange intimacies. This friction is the most fitting image to describe the Anthropocene, the geological epoch that bears our name, but marks the transition from the illusion of human centrality to disorientation in the face of a planet that shakes its tail and reclaims the stage. Morandini has made humans and non-humans speak, putting them in comparison and often in conflict, in familiar yet unpredictable situations, and always with a rare irony, lightness, and originality in the Italian horizon».
The award ceremony took place on June 7, 2023, in the setting of the Circolo dei Lettori di Torino, at an event promoted by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino, which was attended, in addition to the awarded author, by Serenella Iovino, professor of Italian Studies and Environmental Humanities at the University of North Carolina, Matteo Righetto, writer, and Marco Fratoddi, journalist.
