Tag: première

We might be a tiny country but our filmmakers sure know how to touch audiences worldwide. Let’s seal our busy blogyear in absolute beauty with a directorstalk and a unique cinema-experience.

Christmasmonth also means releasemonth for “Le Otto Montagne” all over Europe, including Belgium, homecountry to the couple who brings the Italian bestseller novel to the big screen in a very poetic way.

Enjoy an exclusive chat about a making of like no other, with both Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch.

AC: Eventhough neither of you spoke Italian before this production, you never got lost in translating the book by Paolo Cognetti to the silver screen. ArtistCongratz just for that! And for the Juryprize in Cannes by the way 😉

Charlotte: Thank you, yes, that was quite the challenge. While we were writing the script we realised; ok, in ten months we start shooting; we really need to start learning this language (laughs). And so we went for it. The first big challenge were the castings in Rome. We speeded up the process with grammar books and on line courses. The necessity was high as we started to work on our script in Italian.

Felix: Practical exercise always works.

Charlotte: And before you know it, you start trying to say things. With Luca Marinelli & Alessandro Borghi we could talk in English, but that was not the case with everyone in the cast. At first it was a bit embarrassing but we learned very quickly.

AC: Belgian cinema is booming. Amazing productions share the international limelight, do you see this as an advantage?

Charlotte: Well, our film is a bit different because it’s an Italian, Belgian and French co-production. We see it as an Italian Belgian marriage in the best way. It’s a beautiful collaboration. There is room for every project. Everything which is good will find an audience.

AC: This was your first directing experience as a couple, is this the first of many experiences behind the camera?

Felix: We already worked together in different art forms. As director and actress of course but also as writers. We even made a song together🎵

AC: and you have a production company together named after your son Rufus…

Charlotte: He came first (laughs)

Felix: Charlotte has always been there on the sidelines, watching versions, cuts of movies, she was always there. This has been an extremely intense collaboration but we don’t know yet what will follow next. We surely won’t make the next one together but Charlotte is shooting some things and she wants to write some music. And I want to start acting…

AC: Now there’s an interesting challenge …

Charlotte: Indeed

Felix: No I’m joking

Charlotte: Watch out what you’re saying! (Laughter)

AC: Do you see yourself directing solo in the future?

Charlotte: Why not. I think I could try that out. I would just have to find that story I really believe in. This experience taught me so much. But it’s a whole different thing to do it by yourself. There’s a lot of learning still to do. I know I have some qualities and some things that I should develop more. Because It’s a big job to be a director. But no one ’s perfect at every aspect of it. There are so many to this job.

AC: What do you feel you have to develop for instance?

Charlotte: The oversight of what you’re shooting when you’re shooting it. Priorities, keeping track of time. A practical way of thinking (doing what you have to within a certain timerange, within the budget.)

This is not what I needed to develop so much for this movie because Felix was really on top of all that. But it scared me sometimes, thinking I could never do this but maybe I could after all…

Felix: Of course you can.

Charlotte: It’s something that needs to develop, with a clear mind and some good old common sense. Thinking in a clear way what you’re doing and how much time you have to do it.

AC: Tell us about your first acquaintance with “Le Otto Montagne”📖

Felix: The story crossed my path several times actually. Some people had tipped me, “maybe this is something for you…” I got a call from the production company in Italy. They pitched me this project. I get quite a lot of similar calls and it’s not the way I usually work but there was something about the way this was coming to me. I knew I had to check it out. So I started to read and… completely fell in love.

Maybe it started a bit slowly but halfway through I was already very moved and I realized why people had talked to me about it. Yet for reasons they couldn’t have known. By the end of the book, I was just completely devastated.

From the beginning Paolo Cognetti was part of the creative process of our project

Felix Van Groeningen

AC: Did it help that this was not your first adaptation like The Broken Circle Breakdown or De Helaasheid der Dingen?

Felix: I guess it did. But every project is different. We felt from the beginning that this was going to work for both Charlotte and me.

Some books take more time to crack. Before you jump into it, you need some figuring out…

Felix Van Groeningen

AC What stands out is the unbreakable bond between two friends in this coming of age story. They even build a mountainhouse together…is this what struck you most?

Felix: It’s everything, it ’s the father-son story, it’s the mountains, definitely the friendship, the very pure essence of it all. Their characters are absolutely very pure and simple and non cynical and that is really important for me.

AC: A wonderful story indeed. You must have heard that a lot in Cannes…

Felix: The most beautiful feedback comes from people who are very open having been through something that touched them very deeply.

AC: Le Otto Montagne allows the viewer to read between the lines…

Charlotte: Sometimes the main characters loose track of each other for years and what happens in between, we discover along the way.

“An organic process”

Felix: Ruben (Impens, cinematographer ed. note) and I, we have been working together for over twenty years. We’re not the biggest talkers. Sometimes it’s weird to be with us…for the third person (laughs) being Charlotte in this case. We work together in a very organic way.

AC: You finish each other’s sentences?

Charlotte laughs and adds “they don’t use sentences…”

Felix: No apparently some people think we talk in the same manner. Sometimes we don’t talk a lot and just spend time together and show each other things to try out.

Charlotte: It’s a strange process if you don’t really know it. But now I can look back and see how they work. It’s a pretty organic process. They understand each other in some way. They’d be just silent for an hour and a half, looking on the internet for an image they want for a film.

I ask myself, would it be the same for me with someone else? Or different? I’m curious to discover that. Who is my D.O.P. (director of photography ed;) who understands me without speaking?

Felix: As for Ruben and I, ideas become clear as we’re working…we’re not the loudest shouters. But we are constantly diving in, discovering, being open to the others…being open to chance…

Charlotte: Ideas are very sensitive in the beginning. They can easily be overthrown. So when you launch an idea and make a list with basic ones, someone might put something in there that you already think “nah… ain’t gonna work” but you just give it a chance.💡

That’s the creative process. It’s really nice to honour every idea, as a possibility. Organically.

Charlotte Vandermeersch

AC. We obviously will also read the novel one day 😉 but are there any major differences between the book and the film?

Charlotte: Major, no, because we really stuck to the story. Where the book is in the mind of Pietro, he’s the eye let’s say…in the film you jump from past to present.

To challenge and surprise the viewer you don’t serve it all on a silver platter.

Charlotte Vandermeersch

You really demand something and suggest passing in time and things that might have happened in between. Bits of life, and times shoots forward. Never go back, that’s a choice in editing.

In other movies Felix has jumped a lot back and forth in time in a very intuitive way, like the broken circle but for this film, there was a very clear choice not to do that. But rather to just go on. And there’s no breaking of that rule…because life is like that. Or rather our experience of life is like that. We don’t know if life on earth is like that actually. It’s a philosophical question.

But you do things consequently. So the viewer really starts feeling there is no going back. Besides the voice over filling in some thoughts. But that’s the only liberty we took in the film.

The symbolic of the eight mountains is something Pietro picks up in the east somewhere but actually the author made it up. But it must be based on some
Tibetan symbols.
You know these kinds of circles like a pie, cut in pieces with a center?
All of these symbols you have in Nepal. And the writer really loves to go there.

The metaphor works really well because it actually makes sense, this idea of the eight mountains and the center.

Charlotte Vandermeersch

In January Felix and Charlottes awardwinning picture will be presented at the iconic Sundancefestival for independent movies in Parkcity Utah.

🎬

This interview took place on the same day the Filminstitute shares the magnificent news that the best film of all times is a Belgian cult classic from the seventies. Great to see that so many years later Belgian cinema is playing such an important role on a global scale.

Like Lukas Dhont and Angelo Tijssens (Close), Robin Pront (Zillion), Charlotte and Felix definitely have left their mark on 2022 🎞 🏆

Back in May, velvet carpets of the iconic Cannes filmfestival almost turned black and yellow besides red. Next in line? Oscartime!

• But first treat yourself and your significant others to a special Christmas present and be moved by “le Otto Montagne” in theatres all over the country. Make sure to bring your kleenex. You will need it 🥺😍

Congratz by the way to the late Chantal Ackerman, director of “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce 1080 Bruxelles”, which will also be shown in cinemas again after being awarded best film of all times.