Wolves of Maramureș

Old Ion has kept sheep above Breb for sixty winters, and for sixty winters the wolves have taken their share. That was the arrangement. Nobody wrote it down.

This year the snow comes early and the government announces a bounty on every wolf killed.

Ion's grandson wants the money, and he is not wrong to want it: the flock is smaller than it was, the village is emptier, and a young man needs a reason to stay. Ion wants the mountain to remain what he has always understood it to be. Between the two of them is a young she-wolf who keeps coming back to the edge of the flock, not hunting, just watching, night after night, as though she is waiting for the argument to be settled.

Wooden churches, deep snow, no easy side to take.