Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, Happy as Lazzaro), one of the most important contemporary independent filmmakers, conjures a magical, hilarious, romantic adventure set in a rural Italy eternally caught between the ancient and the modern.  

Josh O’Connor (Challengers, The Crown) stars as Arthur, a ne’er-do well disheveled English archaeologist, who has just completed his prison sentence and longs for his late lover, Beniamina. He teams up with a wayward crew of “tombaroli,” or tomb raiders, who contribute to a thriving market in stolen Etruscan goods. They regard Arthur as a mystic for his ability to use a forked tree branch to locate treasures, and as Arthur immerses himself in the tombaroli, he has yet to overcome his grief, and he wonders if he might be reunited with Beniamina beyond the mortal world. The prospects of hitting the proverbial jackpot and making the big sale to an infamous trafficker named Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher) are on the horizon. When the company unearths a fifth-century relic of invaluable worth, the dark side of plundering the past comes into focus, and the question of who it belongs to — everyone or no one? — is raised.  

Alice Rohrwacher has conjured a marvelous and entertaining film that is also an adventurous journey that intertwines the destinies of several characters in this period romantic drama.