After dabbling in the Hollywood drama with Beautiful Boy, Felix van Groeningen is back, reteaming with frequent collaborator and partner Charlotte Vandermeersch for her co-directorial debut. The Eight Mountains tells the story of estranged childhood friends who reconnect to fulfill the wishes of a recently deceased relative. Conveyed with an epic reverence for the beauty of the world, it’s also remarkable just how intimately keyed-in the directors are to this bond tested by lost time and societal differences. While this journey is perhaps long in the tooth, the Cannes Jury Prize winner is certainly worth seeing on the largest screen possible. Ahead of an April 28 release from Sideshow and Janus, the new trailer has now landed.
Jose Solis said in his review, “There must have been something in the air at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where two of the top prizes went to Belgian films about the impossible standards set up by masculinity leading to tragedy. Lukas Dhont’s Close, which centers on the end of the friendship between two teenagers over a harrowing school year, won the Grand Prix. The Jury Prize went to Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains, which concerns the end of a friendship between two men who meet as boys during a summer that marks them for the rest of their lives. Whatever its pictorial beauty, often significant, this adaptation of Paolo Cognetti’s bestseller exemplifies my distaste for films that depict toxic masculinity without questioning it, or even suggesting there is nothing heroic or brave about refusing to leave behind damaging practices as long as they perpetuate some limited idea of what constitutes manhood.”
See the trailer below.
The Eight Mountains in NYC at Film at Lincoln Center and Angelika Film Center on April 28 and will expand.