Interview: Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, directors of “Les Huit Montagnes”

"Yes, we really want to build this house for real at this altitude. Yes, we really want to go to a glacier." They pulled out all the stops to make this movie have the looks real and authentic, and that's good. One of my favorite movies of 2022 (and 2023) is called The Eight Mountains, an Italian drama about two friends who grew up in the mountains. I've been loving it since the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, only to see it again at another festival at the end of 2022, after its spring 2023 release. Co-directed by Belgian filmmakers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch (also married), the film is a remarkable look at the massive power of mountains in shaping human life. Just thinking about it makes me very emotional, as I myself am a huge mountain enthusiast (I even once went to Nepal to hike around the Himalayas). I was lucky enough to have time to interview Félix and Charlotte earlier in 2023 - I chased them through 2022 and earlier this year when they showed up at Sundance to screen the film. Whenever, I'm happy to share this conversation with both of them - to discuss the parts of the film that I find truly extraordinary.

The Eight Mountains (originally The Otto Mountain in Italian) is written and directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch; it is adapted from the novel of the same name written by the Italian author Paolo Cognetti. It stars Luca Marinelli as Pietro and Alessandro Borghi as Bruno, two boys who become best friends growing up in the Italian Alps near Turin. The film follows them as they grow up and become men, each going their own way: Bruno goes deeper into the mountains and builds his own mountain refuge from scratch; Pietro explores further, eventually traveling to the Himalayas and meeting a Nepalese woman. The film screened at festivals in Cannes, Munich, Melbourne, Zurich, Busan, Zagreb, Cologne, Vilnius, Tallinn and Sundance, winning numerous awards over time. After premiering in arthouse cinemas in the United States earlier in 2023, it is now available to stream on Criterion Channel. I love this movie and I've talked about it many times. Here is my original Cannes 2022 review. I also like the soundtrack by Swedish musician Daniel Norgren - visit his official website. My conversation with Félix and Charlotte begins below.

Before creating this, how closely were you connected to the mountains? What is your relationship to the mountains? Did this movie make you understand and appreciate them better?

Felix van Groeningen: My personal connection is this: I went to this place in the center of France, between the volcanoes…. But not so high. Yet it is a very remote place. The nearest department store is 20 kilometers away. And the biggest city, it takes an hour to get there, so very isolated. And that place, my parents first went to live there… Then they came back to Belgium. It was even before I was born. And we continued there. My parents built a house there, I have part of my family who started living there. So I have this place that I knew during the holidays, where I go [also] when I need to feel anchored, when the city is too much. I also have my personal Bruno, who is my cousin, who still lives there, even though they travel more than Bruno. So I have this connection. This very pure place in the world where time stands still… Where you have very pure lakes and where you find yourself with the mountains in the background. And with people from there whom we know very well. And my mom had a relationship with a guy over there who was a bricklayer.

Charlotte Vandermeersch: They build their own houses.

Felix: We built our own house. And before I