Interview: Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch on The Eight Mountains

Table Of Content

• The Slamdance Film Festival is moving to Los Angeles with its next edition
• Charlotte Lucas
• The Eight Mountains Review: A Lucid Coming-of-Age Story About the Power of Friendship
• Blue Ivy joins mom Beyoncé in ‘Lion King’ prequel ‘Mufasa.’ Can you feel the love?
• Mary Tobias Miller Interior Design
• Dan Schneider Sues ‘Quiet on Set’ Producers for Defamation, Calls Nickelodeon Abuse Docuseries a ‘Hit Job’

In an interview with the directors, Van Groeningen said they were very moved by the characters in the book, which he called “a simple story, an epic really, set against a beautiful backdrop” that spoke to him directly, with elements “That were very very personal to me,” he said. Designed for a young family with ties to New York, this whole home design is just what the clients had in mind—modern but warm and functional for their daily life with two young children. Anne Buresh shares with us a glimpse into her favorite room design, along with how this family room was inspired and came together to create timeless serenity. Feeling dissatisfied with his aimless life, Pietro decides to reinvent himself by visiting Nepal.

The Eight Mountains review – a gentle, accomplished epic - Little White Lies

The Eight Mountains review – a gentle, accomplished epic.

Posted: Tue, 09 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The Slamdance Film Festival is moving to Los Angeles with its next edition

But, she also balances this out beautifully by adding new-age designs to her work. This is the perfect representation of the balance that the city of Charlotte has. Recently having some high-profile clients has been the highlight for Geri from Freespace Design and her portfolio.

Charlotte Lucas

Felix, do you see that approach to music as similar to your other films? I always think about your use of “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof in Beautiful Boy, which at first had me skeptical but eventually won me over with its sincerity. Since you mentioned the music, how did you settle on your approach to using it in the film? There’s a real earnestness to the way it accompanies the action you depict, especially in montage, where so many filmmakers can use it as ironic or removed commentary on the action. Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch enter a new stage of their partnership, both professional and personal, through their co-direction of The Eight Mountains.

The Eight Mountains Review: A Lucid Coming-of-Age Story About the Power of Friendship

Bruno confronts Pietro with the aimlessness of his life and pushes him to help him build the house his father had wanted. Bruno plans to restore his uncle's pasture and continue living the life of a mountaineer, and encourages Pietro to follow his dream and write a book. An unusual pairing, to be sure, but one that for me makes a sad and sublime kind of sense.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Van Groeningen noted that Marinelli and Borghi played friends before in Claudio Caligari’s gritty “Non essere cattivo” (“Don’t Be Bad”) which went to Venice in 2015. It was a time to sit back and reassess your way of living; our way as human beings on the planet to find new respect for the earth. The directors wrote the script during lockdown and both say it was “really nice” to be in the Alps and in Nepal, which are the film’s two main locations, at that particular time. This “trip that we made in our fantasy to these corners of the world during lockdown” seeped into the film, Vandermeersch noted.

Mary Tobias Miller Interior Design

The two boys come from different worlds but are the only children in the village. They become friends instantly, out of convenience, but also because they throw themselves into shared activities with the easy trust children often have. They have an idyllic summer, wandering the steep slopes, swimming in a blue-green mountain lake, and at one point, hauling rocks into a stream to build a makeshift dam. Bruno and Pietro reunite every summer, picking up where they left off. Sometimes friendships formed in childhood are like that if we're lucky. It really helped us rediscover each other and see how complementary we are and trust each other’s instincts.

The Eight Mountains review – a movie with air in its lungs and love in its heart - The Guardian

The Eight Mountains review – a movie with air in its lungs and love in its heart.

Posted: Thu, 19 May 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

So it’s a relief to report that Tóth, co-adapting with Klára Muhi a novel by Zsuzsa F. Várkonyi, handles this intermittent tension — both what’s interior and unarticulated, and what’s externally threatening — with an appreciative subtlety, and without a hint of soapiness. Tóth nods cautiously toward a dignified ambiguity, what can exist in the molecules between vulnerable souls in the process of rebuilding. Aldó, played by Károly Hajduk, is a wiry, disheveled figure with benevolent eyes and a haunted air, whose entire life is his ob-gyn practice since losing his family in the camps. When he meets angrily self-possessed 16-year-old patient Klára (Abigél Szőke), she’s coming out of a delayed puberty, still writing letters to parents whose absence she can explain away, and railing against life under her discipline-intensive, exasperated great-aunt Olgi (Mari Nagy). There’s an easy, flinty chemistry between Marinelli and Borghi, which is especially interesting given each is somewhat counterintuitively cast in a role for which the other might seem a more obvious choice.

Meredith from Georgia Street Design

It’s Me, Margaret” and “Tótem” A young girl’s coming-of-age and her family’s joy and heartache are perfectly observed in both Kelly Fremon Craig’s underappreciated Judy Blume adaptation and Lila Avilés’ haunting work of poetic realism. “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” and “Earth Mama” A highly intelligent way with the camera and a deep, intuitive understanding of Black motherhood and childhood distinguished both of these sterling debut features. “About Dry Grasses” and “Godland”Two of the year’s most visually and intellectually immersive films, each pitting one very small man against a vast, sprawling landscape. “The Eight Mountains” is directed by Oscar-nominated Felix van Groeningen (“The Broken Circle Breakdown”) and Charlotte Vandermeesch. The cast includes Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi, Lupo Barbiero, Cristiano Sassella, and Elisabetta Mazzullo. The Eight Mountains screened at the Cannes film festival, and is released on 12 May in UK cinemas.

Dan Schneider Sues ‘Quiet on Set’ Producers for Defamation, Calls Nickelodeon Abuse Docuseries a ‘Hit Job’

But their Edenic friendship is ruined by Pietro’s parents, who make a heavy-handed and misjudged offer to let Bruno live with them in the big city and attend high school there. Bruno’s absent father objects to this condescension, and takes the boy away to work with him on a building site while Pietro starts a troubled middle-class student career. Pietro never forgives his father for splitting them up, and for being more impressed by the tougher and more alpha Bruno, who is a real outdoorsman. The film moves through their adolescence, when they lose touch with each other, and into adulthood, where Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) find their way toward one another again. In many cases, their friendship is the only stable thing in the flux of life.

"The Eight Mountains" starts with the meeting of two 11-year-old boys in a remote village in the Italian Alps. Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) is a kid from Turin whose mother rented a summer house in the mountains. Bruno (Cristiano Sassella) lives with his aunt and uncle, working their farm.

One night, Pietro tells him about a Nepalese he met who described how the world consists of eight circular mountain ranges divided by eight seas, and at the center of it all is Mount Meru, the tallest mountain. Pietro asks Bruno whether the person who has visited the eight mountains and eight seas is more learned than the person who has scaled Mount Meru. Bruno identifies himself as being on Mount Meru and Pietro claims to be visiting the eight mountains and that he is more knowledgeable.

The actors bring all the intelligence such heart-rending delicacy requires, too, as cinematographer Gábor Marosi foregrounds their faces in flatly lighted widescreen images evocative of a dimly lighted existence. With deep, melancholy eyes you can imagine inspiring a painter, Hajduk keeps Aldó’s sorrow ever-present, even in the hint of a smile; the way his worry for “Sunny” (Klára’s nickname) becomes a quiet engine in the film is a low-key master’s class. ” I’ve just logged in to Zoom to talk to Belgian directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, and they’re laughing already. ” says Vandermeersch I flap around, fiddling with my webcam, but nothing will correct the me-shaped smear on the screen.

A mention of the Tibetan sky burial ritual echoes later on; twice, a life-and-death moment is relayed in the prosaic detail of hazard lights blinking on a car pulled in to the side of the road. Early in the process they met with Paolo Cognetti who lives six months out of the year in the Alps. “He showed us around a lot of the locations that serve as inspirations for this book,” he said, so in the end they shot the Italian portion of the film, which is also shot in Nepal, near to the writer’s Alpine abode. An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the breathtaking Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains follows over four decades the profound, complex relationship between Pietro and Bru... Susan Keesler shares with us a glimpse into her favorite room design, along with how this family room was inspired and came together with beautiful springtime shades.

When one of us said, “I believe in this,” then there’s something there that’s really valuable. We were happy, the producers were happy, and Felix suddenly proposed to direct the whole thing together. Have faith.” It was this big journey for us as a family, going to Italy with our son and making it a very shared experience, not [Felix] leaving us for a year and a half.

He also learns that in his absence his father has continued to see Bruno. Eventually he finds Bruno in the mountains where his father has left a pile of rocks and wood on a slope intending to build a house. It becomes clear that while Pietro was alienated from his father, his father had become closer to Bruno.