The Mountain

Stunning widescreen cinematography will keep audiences locked to the screen in this surprising man-in-wilderness tale set among the glaciers of the French Alps.

Pierre is your typical office worker, devoting hours to making money for other people. When a glimpse of Mont Blanc out the window catches his eye, he ditches the corporate world and decides to scale the mountain. As you can imagine, this probably isn’t wise for an amateur hiker. But as Pierre attempts to carve out a life in the ice, things take a turn for the surreal. To tell any more would be to reveal the narrative pivot that The Mountain takes viewers on – but just know it has been compared to Gaspar Noé (whose film Vortex, incidentally, also screens at this year’s MIFF).

Set almost exclusively on the snowy, windswept slopes of France’s alpine region, The Mountain is an adventure tale fashioned through the unique perspective of director and star Thomas Salvador. Winner of the SACD Award for the best French-language film in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight competition, his second feature will reward viewers who will no doubt be captivated by the impressive camerawork as well as the soundtrack by renowned electronic DJ Chloé Thevenin.

“What goes up doesn’t immediately come down in actor-director Thomas Salvador’s strange and visually ravishing follow-up to his equally quirky debut feature … A film with a shy and sly sense of humour.” – Screen Daily