The Belgian duo Felix van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown, Belgica, Beautiful Boy) and Charlotte Vandermeersch set themselves the not-so-easy task of translating the successful book of the same name by the Italian Paolo Cognetti. However, they made not only a visually impressive and flawless film, but also “Osam planina” is an emotional and poignant drama about a friendship over a period of more than thirty years. It is a film about the friendship of two men who cannot talk about their feelings and what troubles them, and although the title of the film itself refers to the eight peaks of Nepal, which are a kind of symbol of ambition and conquest, the action mostly takes place in the Italian Alps.
The Belgian duo decided for a somewhat old-fashioned, vertical photo, perhaps precisely so that the viewer gets the best possible impression of those heights, of that vast space where Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) will meet as 12-year-olds. Pietro is also the narrator of the story, and during one summer he arrived with his father and mother from Turin to the Italian Alps, where his peer Bruno lives with his family in an almost mountain style. Very soon two boys will become friends and become extremely close, and we will follow their friendship in a somewhat fragmentary style over the next thirty years.
Pietro will come and go to the mountains, there they will build a stone house together where they will spend the summers, and although at first it seems that the two could not be more different, we will understand that they both have a restless spirit and that they are not held in place. Although this might give the impression that “Eight Mountains” could be some Alpine Brokeback Mountain, Pietro and Bruno’s relationship is purely friendly, and it is a meditative drama in which their lives will constantly intertwine. After life separates them as boys and after twenty years later they meet again after the death of Pietro’s father, he will realize that his old man, with whom he had previously broken off relations, was close to Bruno and that for years they hiked together in the Alps .
Throughout his life, Pietro, who will soon actually go to Nepal where he will spend a good part of the year after becoming a successful writer, will be haunted by his friendship with Bruno, and he will constantly think that he was the best version of himself when he was in his company. No matter what, apart from his father, Bruno will also “kidnap” the girl whom Pietro seemed to like too. “Eight Mountains” was a really special film. Maybe those mountains and those wonderful landscapes have a somehow calming effect, there’s some primal feeling and it’s the film that stays in your head for a long time. “The Eight Mountains” had its premiere in Cannes, where it shared the jury prize with the film “EO” by Jerzy Skolimowski.