A look at the impact of depression and grief across generations – thought not always as grim as that description makes it sound – director Christian Einshøj’s personal essay film The Mountains examines the void that can form within a family when no one talks about their feelings.
The eldest of three brothers, Christian is trying his best to reconnect with his siblings and father. When he was little, Christian’s family moved from Denmark to a small town in the Norwegian mountains because of his father’s job. It was supposed to be a temporary relocation, but it became more permanent following the death of his (then) youngest brother, Kristoffer, after a prolonged illness. It was a tragedy that forever impacted the family dynamic. Christian developed a keen fear of loss at a young age, and began religiously documenting all of the family’s activities in the same way his father once did. Søren, Christian’s former CEO father, became unable to slow down, while siblings Fred and Alex (the latter of whom was born after Kristoffer’s passing) did everything possible to leave town as quickly as they could upon becoming adults, falling upon hard times of their own in the process. Now, they all couldn’t be further apart, geographically or emotionally, something Christian would like to understand and hopefully change.
Pulling from over thirty years worth of home movies and photographs, The Mountains examines the damage that can be done by internalizing and repressing grief, sadness, and anxiety, and the ripples that learned behaviour can have throughout a family. It’s understandably slow going in Einshøj’s attempts to get his normally stoic relatives to open up and share their true feelings, but eventually The Mountains gets around to swells of emotions that feel like dams giving way. Getting to that point can sometimes be difficult because of his subjects’ overall elusiveness – with Einshøj having to fill in a lot of contextual blanks on his own – but ultimately the destination justifies this long in the making extension of the director’s 2018 Hot Docs award winning short film, Haunted.
Culminating in a 3,500 kilometre road trip designed to keep Alex from going down a similar dark path to one travelled by Fred, The Mountains powerfully amasses emotional steam built around an examination not only of one family’s desire to keep grief and sadness at arm’s length, but also of the nature of the captured image, and the memories that either hide or fade away.
Thursday, April 27, 2023 – 6:00 pm – TIFF Bell Lightbox 4
Sunday, April 30, 2023 – 12:00 pm – Scotiabank Theatre 5
The Mountains will be available to stream across Canada via Hot Docs from May 5 to May 9.
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