Oct. 25, 2023: Le otto montagne / The Eight Mountains

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023
7 pm @ Galaxy Cinemas, Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Directors: Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch
Italy/Belgium 2022
Italian; 147 minutes
Rated: 14A

While visiting a village in the Italian Alps with his mother, young Pietro develops a friendship with a local boy, Bruno. As the two reconnect sporadically over the next few decades, their bond is tested and strengthened by the ebb and flow of their very different lives. Co-winner of the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, The Eight Mountains captures through observant detail and stunning landscape photography a timeless friendship, the interiority of its characters just as vast and monumental as the mountains that quietly overlook them. Here, the simple joys found in nature and friendship offer a staggering rumination on beauty itself – where we find it and how it leaves us.

This film has mystery and passion, it climbs mountainous highs and rewards you with the opposite of vertigo: a sort of exaltation. Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

The framing of every shot is exquisite and the sense of place and time, the steepness and prospect of the mountains, the snow and freshness of spring are palpable. John Bleasdale, Sight & Sound

The love story that is The Eight Mountains expresses this ineffable relationship between those who know us best and the places in which we find ourselves with a rough-hewn grace and profound knowingness. Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service