Alpen (Alps)

«Alps» tells the story of a secret society. A gymnast, her trainer, a nurse and a caregiver offer themselves to the relatives of the deceased as replacements of their loved ones – as actors who act within the reality of the living relatives. For a fixed hourly rate, they assume the role of the daughter, the husband, the lover, the hairdresser, or a good friend, and quench the longing to be in the presence of the deceased.

With their assignments, the members of the group «Alps», who have named themselves after the highest mountains in Switzerland, enter a world of fiction, a parallel world from which we draw comparisons to our own. The «Alps» are a secret society without a conspiracy, and without religious or ideological overtones. They exist in our society but the rules that they adhere to are slightly bent.

Extraordinary films and cultural production has been coming out of Greece lately, including «Alps», by director and writer Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous film «Dogtooth» was nominated for an Academy Award. At the International Film Festival, Venice, in 2011, the film was awarded Best Script, and in 2012, at the Sydney Film Festival, it won an award for Best Film. The way Greece was hit by the financial crisis and the subsequent austerity measures easily lend themselves as a backdrop for associations about a disillusioned society for whom morals and politics are threatened by a total collapse of values. Seen from a Greek perspective, the Alps appear as the epitome of stability; a majestic landscape that sublimates Swiss affluence and order.

The Berlin based director Tom Kühnel stages the parable about the unflappable stability of the alps as a play that switches between layers of reality and perception.