At times the camera will pull back and show us the characters from a distance, dwarfed by the sheer magnificence of their surroundings, as if to suggest how small we all are in the scheme of things. It isn't just the movie's visual grandeur that wows you it's the scale of it, the way it merges the epic and the intimate. He loves tormented characters and big, angsty emotions, but while The Eight Mountains churns with feeling, I came away admiring its subtlety and complexity - and yes, its majesty.

Her co-director and partner, Van Groeningen, has made a number of earlier features, including the romantic tragedy The Broken Circle Breakdown and Beautiful Boy, an addiction drama starring Timothée Chalamet. This is the first film directed by Vandermeersch, a longtime actor. Pop Culture Happy Hour Addiction Without An Ending In 'Beautiful Boy' They become fast friends, and the mountain, with its scenic lakes and lush valleys, makes for a stunning open playground. It's there that he meets another boy about the same age, named Bruno, who lives on a small farm nearby. The story is narrated by Pietro, a young boy from the city of Turin who's spending a summer in the Alps with his parents. The mountain scenery is spectacular - see this one in a theater if you can - but it's the richness of the emotional journey that stays with you.

Adapted from Paolo Cognetti's 2016 debut novel, it tells the story of two young boys who meet in the Italian Alps and forge a life-changing bond. The best of the bunch is the new Italian-language drama The Eight Mountains, which was written and directed by the Belgian filmmakers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. So it's been refreshing to encounter films that have recently bucked the trend, like Armageddon Timeand the Oscar-nominated Close.

Over the past several months I've seen a few unusually heartfelt movies about male friendship - a subject that Hollywood likes to milk for laughs but rarely treats with the sincerity and sensitivity it deserves. Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) and Pietro (Luca Marinelli) reconnect in the Italian Alps as adults in The Eight Mountains.

Frightful's mountain book