Forest High

A film about the effect that solitude has on the caretakers of a remote mountain lodge, Forest High is about as different from The Shining as any movie with that description could possibly be—it’s almost closer to a Japanese iyashikei, a genre intended to have a healing or soothing effect on the audience. Across four seasons, three women—thirtysomething Anna (Salomé Richard), middle-aged Hélène (Aurélia Petit), and empty nester Suzanne (Anne Coesens)—serve in turn as the seasonal caretaker for an Alpine hut, keeping up the space and tending to the basic needs of the hardy hikers who come through on offseason treks or summer tours. The guests come and go, but the caretakers remain. Director Manon Coubia remains attuned not to the passing dramas nor comedies of leisure, but to these women and their labor, delicately allowing their histories, and their reasons for choosing to live alone, to emerge. Shooting her debut feature with a tiny crew in a real mountain hut, Coubia did double duty as filmmaker and manager of the hut, which was open to the public during the production. A lengthy location shoot open to serendipitous occurrences, and 16mm film stock, allowed the filmmaker and her cast to commune with the natural world with which each woman coexists, and upon which the modern world continues to encroach. Winner of a Special Mention by the Perspectives section jury at the 2026 Berlinale.