The Eight Mountains

The Eight Mountains (Italian: Le otto montagne) is a 2022 drama film co-directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, who co-adapted the screenplay from the novel of the same name by Paolo Cognetti. The film depicts a friendship between two men who spend their childhood together in a remote Alpine village and reconnect later as adults. The title is a reference to the concept in Buddhism and ancient Indian cosmology that the world is composed of nine mountains and eight seas, specifically eight concentric circular mountain ranges separated from one another by eight seas, with the ninth and tallest mountain, Mount Meru, at the center. The film premiered in competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2022, where it won the Jury Prize tying with EO. The next year it was awarded the David di Donatello for Best Film.