| Alpeis | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Yorgos Lanthimos |
| Produced by | Athina Rachel Tsangari Yorgos Lanthimos |
| Written by | Yorgos Lanthimos Efthymis Filippou |
| Starring | Aggeliki Papoulia Ariane Labed |
| Cinematography | Christos Voudouris |
| Editing by | Yorgos Mavropsaridis |
| Studio | Haos Film |
| Release date(s) | 3 September 2011 (Venice Film Festival) |
| Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | Greece |
| Language | Greek |
Alps (Greek: Αλπεις, translit. Alpeis) is a 2011 Greek drama film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It stars Aggeliki Papoulia and Ariane Labed, and was co-written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou. It premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival where it won Osella for Best Screenplay.
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Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou developed the premise for the film out of the idea of people who allege something which is fabricated, for example via prank calls or by announcing their own deaths. The story took form as they needed a setting which could work well cinematically. Lanthimos considers it the complete opposite of his previous film, Dogtooth, which he says "is the story of a person who tries to escape a fictitious world. Alps is about a person who tries to enter a fabricated world."[1]
The film was produced by the Greek company Chaos(Χάος) Film, which previously had produced Lanthimos' 2005 film Kinetta. The budget included funding from the Greek Film Center.[2] Filming started in October 2010.[3] Some scenes were added on the set and parts of the dialogue were improvised by the actors.[1]
The film premiered on 3 September 2011 in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival.[4] Lee Marshall of Screen Daily started by comparing Alps to the director's last film. He called it "a sort of Dogtooth 2", and wrote that "the cultured urban audiences turned on by the sheer kookiness of that film may feel a slight sense of dejà vu here." On the film in its own right, Marshall wrote: "Hollywood might have fashioned a weepie or a thriller out of the same material - and there are echoes here of some of Hitchcock's fascination with surrogates, from the Roger Thornhill/George Kaplan of North by Northwest to the Madeleine/Carlotta of Vertigo. But Alps is so intriguing because of what it refuses to explain. ... It's also a film which manages to juggle absurdist comedy with bleak tragedy, a yearning desire for human warmth with outbreaks of sudden violence, all the while maintaining an impressive control of tone."[5]