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The Mountains review – a beautiful portrait of a family’s attempt to process a tragedy

Christian Einshøj’s debut feature unearths home video footage taken by his father, as he and his siblings explore their long-buried feelings about their brother’s deathIn his debut feature, Christian Einshøj tends to the hidden wounds of family by rewinding to the past. As a young boy, he moved from Norway to Denmark with his parents and his brother Frederik. The change was supposed to be temporary. Tragedy, however, struck: Kristoffer, one of Einshøj’s brothers, was born with a terminal condition. His illness and later death cast a dark shadow over a once tightly knit household: they would never return to Denmark to live as a family again.Through voiceover, Einshøj recalls this painful history with profound introspection, as well as humour. Grainy home videos, largely shot by Einshøj’s father, Søren, resurface, but while Søren used his camera to preserve Kristoffer’s memories before his death, Einshøj turns to film-making as a means of reconciliation. Unable to process Kristoffer’s death, Søren retreats into the numbing grind of work. Meanwhile, Einshøj has grown apart from his surviving brothers, Frederik and Alex, both of whom experience periods of depression as a result of their shared trauma. Continue reading...

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