Something to watch tonight: Friday 11 April

The Eight Mountains/Le otto montagne (van Groeningen/Vandermeersch)

The pro­gramme for the 2025 Italian Film Festival in New Zealand has been announced and I’ll be pre­view­ing some of the titles con­tained in it before the first screen­ings in Auckland on 29 April.

Today, though, I thought I would look back at my pre­view art­icle for last year’s fest­iv­al (pub­lished at RNZ) and see if any of the three were avail­able online yet and – pleas­ingly – they are.

There’s Still Tomorrow has only just com­pleted a suc­cess­ful the­at­ric­al return sea­son and is now avail­able as a digit­al rent­al via the usu­al outlets.

Corrupt cop thrill­er Last Night of Amore (L’ultima notte di Amore) is avail­able as a digit­al rent­al but from Amazon’s Prime Video only.

The one I want to recom­mend today is an AroVision exclus­ive rent­al: The Eight Mountains.

Having only done the tini­est bit of home­work before this film began, I had thought that this was the story of two moun­tain­eers who climb eight moun­tains togeth­er over a life­time of friendship.

I got the friend­ship bit right, but in fact the film is more of a spir­itu­al and emo­tion­al jour­ney than a phys­ic­al one. There are moun­tains – the friends meet as chil­dren in the Italian Alps and the moun­tains, they are beau­ti­ful – but the title refers to the Buddhist concept and that the eight moun­tains are with­in us to be overcome.

In 1984, middle-class Pietro spends a sum­mer in Grana where he befriends Bruno, the only child left in the vil­lage as eco­nom­ic change has forced the pop­u­la­tion to move away for work. Despite becom­ing great friends, they are estranged dur­ing adoles­cence and the adult Pietro (Luca Marinelli) is sur­prised to dis­cov­er that his par­ents had kept in touch with Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), and even bought an old hut for him to restore.

Refer a friend

Friends again, Pietro and Bruno embark on the rebuild togeth­er and they both seem to have found a sense of pur­pose that had pre­vi­ously eluded them.

As adult­hood goes on, though, life chal­lenges the two men dif­fer­ently and we see how easy it is for male friend­ships to drift apart. Because of the assump­tions we make, we often think that we don’t need to ask ques­tions, or check in on our friends, because when we are togeth­er it seems so easy. Until all of a sud­den, it isn’t.

The grand alpine (and Himalayan) back­drops provide a sense of the scale of human exist­ence, but they don’t dimin­ish the scale of the emo­tion or feel­ing of being human. Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s film reminds us of that.

Where to watch The Eight Mountains

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision

Australia: Streaming on Stan

Canada & USA: Streaming on Criterion Channel

Ireland: Streaming on Mubi

India: Not cur­rently available

UK: Streaming on Mubi or BFIPlayer