A shepherd sits on the edge of a mountain, where the slate-gray stones meet the deep, verdant grass. Lush trees, whose branches dance in the wind, surround him. Every day, the old man watches cows graze at the foot of the mountain. Call it a ritual. His wrinkled and stubbly face marks the passage of time. Occasionally, his donkey joins him. So begins Il Buco, Michelangelo Frammartino’s masterful work of sound and sight.

Eleven years after his last feature, The Four Times, a philosophical meditation on a goatherd’s life, Frammartino returns with this quiet study of a dangerous exploratory effort. This film,...