Mountain Symphony

Listen to the Alps. The beauty, vulnerability, transformation and destruction. What we hear changes what we see. A film that casts a spell on viewers.

MOUNTAIN SYMPHONY is a journey of sound – from the valleys up into the mountains, all the way to the Alpine peaks. We encounter people who open our ears and eyes. They document the sounds of melting glaciers, capture the pulse of the trees with their sensors or make the life that exists below ground audible. Ornithologists, mountain guides, psychologists – all of them seeking the sounds of the mountains. Finally, at the very summit, we discover something that many search for their entire lives: silence.

This orchestra of the Alps intones a polyphonic masterpiece: a continuo of crickets and the wind in the treetops; the marmots or the calls of birds of prey as soloists. In this symphony, everything and everyone has its place. We become part of an acoustic fabric that draws us deeply into the time and space of the moment, as only sound can.

However, this is no untouched idyll: the concert of the mountains is sometimes interrupted by chainsaws and other intrusions. Throughout, the sounds and images reinforce one another or create contrasts. Beneath a picture-postcard landscape, the commotion of vehicles passing underground emerges from the ventilation shafts of the Gotthard tunnel. In the forest, a mysterious and evocative percussion blends into a concert of birdsong. It is the sound of suffering trees, as if calling for help, and of melting glaciers – an evocative reminder that the world is in danger.

Production is set to take place in South Tyrol, Austria, Switzerland, and possibly France.