TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Sport and cinema

Le Sommet des dieux

Patrick Imbert
2021 - France / Luxembourg - 1h35

Screenings : wednesday 24 - 2:00 pm - Pathé - 1 - presented by Dominique Terasas - film teacher friday 26 - 10:30 am - Pathé - 2

In Kathmandu, Fukamachi, a reporter desperate for a scoop, thinks he has recognised a camera belonging to George Mallory, who disappeared in 1924, in the hands of the mysterious Habu, a banned climber who was thought to have disappeared many years ago. This encounter leads Fukamachi into a world of mountaineers consumed by passion. He hopes to find there the answer to the Mallory enigma but will have to confront his own demons.

A new French adaptation of a work by Japanese mangaka Jirô Taniguchi, Le Sommet des dieux (The Summit of the Gods) is an animated film on the border between the Belgian ligne claire and manga stylisation. Director Patrick Imbert, who also animated Ernest et Célestine, and his collaborators have chosen a few key episodes from the 1,500-page story, alternating, as in the mangas, between Tokyo, Nepal and other mountainous regions of the world. The investigation is a pretext for a meditation on the ambivalence of the world of climbing; on courage and surpassing yourself, on the obsession of people attracted by the quest for summits. The music, composed by Amine Bouhafa, creates lyrical flights of fancy for this intimate, universal film, which also features some gripping suspense sequences. “Each perspective and the remarkable sound work on the echoes and breath of the wind give a physical experience of the beauty and dangers of the mountains. Impressive.” (Xavier Leherpeur; L'Obs)

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Lazare Herson-Macarel, Eric Herson-Macarel, Damien Boisseau, Elisabeth Ventura
Voices : X
Screenplay : Magali Pouzol, Patrick Imbert
Editing : Benjamin Massoubre, Camillelvis Théry
Music : Amine Bouhafa

Production : Julianne Films, Folivari, Mélusine Productions

French distributor : Wild Bunch