Sikh Formaggio

The Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese industry in Lombardy runs in large part on Sikh labor. Workers from Punjab began arriving in the late 1990s, drawn by work that matched skills they already had, and settled into a small community in Pessina Cremonese that has grown into a genuine second home. They work the dairies, maintain the wheels of cheese through their long aging process, and have built a life in one of Italy's most traditional agricultural regions.

The film follows both generations: the workers who came first and the children now attending Italian universities, navigating between Punjabi culture at home and Italian life everywhere else. Questions of identity run through the whole film — what gets kept, what gets adapted, and what it means to be Sikh in a country that had no framework for understanding you when you arrived. Sikh Formaggio is a film about migration, belonging, and the long work of making a place for yourself somewhere that wasn't built with you in mind.