We are often used to thinking of the documentary as the privileged sphere in which mountain cinema is embodied, with the latter relegated, in fictional products, to mere setting. A mountain cinema, in fact, rather than a mountain cinema, capable of narrating the people and contemporary issues of the highlands.

And yet, more and more are examples of a new filmography, able to breathe new life into the genre and grapple with a narrative that is not taken for granted, free from the clichés that have often reduced the mountains to a pure landscape or an idyllic stage on which to develop events that could easily decline elsewhere.

For this second evening of Mountaintelling, we offer the viewing and in-depth analysis of three films that, in their diversity of genre and style, account for the incredible vitality of contemporary non-documentary mountain cinema production: “Egoland,” the latest work by the Spaniard Ignasi Lopez Fabregas, who with a series of funny and sharp short films has earned the title of master of a strictly mountaineering-set adult animation cinema; “Elisabeth,” the directorial debut of the French actress Caroline Tillette (a face known to Italian audiences for her appearances in Paolo Sorrentino’s films), a story of female courage, set in the Alps in the winter of 1943; ending with one of the most interesting first works of the year, “Rispet,” the first fiction feature by Trentino-based director Cecilia Bozza Wolf, who, to the emotional and psychological condition of young people living in Alpine villages, had already dedicated her acclaimed documentary “Vergot,” winner of the Audience Award at Cervino CineMountain 2017.

With the directors (and the protagonist of “Rispet,” Alex Zancanella) of these three fresh and original works, each capable of telling, in its own way, a mountain that has no place on postcards and commercials, we will reflect on the frontiers of storytelling in the “new” mountain cinema.