Yorgos Lanthimos • Greece • 2011 • A chilling portrait of a society that has gone off the rails.
A gymnast desperately wants to perform her routine to a pop song, but her coach says she's not ready. The coach himself moonlights as a grief surrogate—he is Mont Blanc, the head of Alps, a secret society whose members pose as the recently deceased, dressing in their clothes and performing their rituals in order to help friends and family members process their loss. When a tennis player is involved in a terrible accident, Mont Blanc recruits the gymnast to impersonate her. Yet soon enough the gymnast, now known as Monte Rosa, begins attaching too closely to her clients, weaving a web of falsehoods that quickly spirals out of control.
Deconstructing life, death, and relationships—the very foundations of human life—Alps is a chilling portrait of a society that has gone off the rails. Yorgos Lanthimos's third feature premiered at Rotterdam, Toronto, Locarno, and the Venice International Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay.