Force Majeure (2014)
Saved on this device. to keep it.
Where to Watch
With Ads
Source: JustWatch
Physical Media
A perfect Swedish family sits down to lunch on a restaurant terrace, high in the French Alps. Sun, snow, two blond kids. Then an avalanche rolls down the slope toward them, and for a few seconds it looks like it will bury the whole deck.
The mother throws herself over the children. The father grabs his phone and runs.
The snow stops short, harmless. Everyone shuffles back to the table. But it happened, everyone saw it, and FORCE MAJEURE (2014) spends the next two hours on the slow, excruciating, blackly funny collapse of a marriage over five seconds no one can un-see.
Ruben Östlund conceived the film after repeatedly watching a YouTube clip. Tourists at a mountain restaurant panic at an oncoming avalanche, then sheepishly return to their seats once they realize the danger was an illusion, ashamed of how they broke.
A friend supplied the twist that made it a movie: what if only the father runs, and only he has to walk back to the table?
Then Östlund went looking and found studies showing couples who survive hijackings often divorce afterward. He found that survivors of shipwrecks like the Costa Concordia were disproportionately men who saved themselves, leaving women and children behind.
The father-protector, it turns out, is often just a story we tell. Östlund half-jokes that you should watch the film as a relationship test, before you find out the hard way.
About the Film
A film about disasters - both natural and man-made.
- Directed By
- Ruben Östlund
- Runtime
- 119 minutes
- Released
- August 15, 2014
- US Theatrical
- October 24, 2014
- Certification
- R
- Country
- Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden
- Starring
- Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wettergren, Vincent Wettergren, Kristofer Hivju
More Credits
- Genres
- Drama
- Language
- French, Norwegian, Swedish, English
- Origin
- SE
- Studios
- Motlys, Coproduction Office, Film i Väst, Plattform Produktion, Parisienne, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma
- Written By
- Ruben Östlund
- Produced By
- Marie Kjellson, Philippe Bober, Erik Hemmendorff, Jessica Ask
- Cinematography
- Fredrik Wenzel
- Music
- Ola Fløttum
- Also Starring
- Fanni Metelius, Karin Myrenberg, Brady Corbet, Johannes Moustos, Jorge Lattof
- Box Office
- $4,094,339
This website uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.
Good film.
Great movie and shocking to see the father turn tale and run like a true coward. You knew at that point, their life together was, or should be, over. Kick him to the curb. Quickly.
I had a boyfriend who did this after a collision. Two cars collided and rolled into mine (I was at stop sign). He ran out of my car and away before i had my seatbelt off. He was afraid there would be an explosion.
Should have been the last straw for us.
There’s a very funny King of Queens episode on this very theme: some oxygen masks (accidentally) deploy as their flight is landing, and Doug hogs the single mask that drops down between him and Carrie. The hilarity ensues.
Marcy Axness Seinfeld as well. George actually knocked an old lady out of his way running from a fire?
My ex-husband told me once “by the way, if the house is on fire, you are on your own, I’m running.”
He only had to tell me once, I got the memo. It wasn’t the last straw, but then I saw the haystack…
That was so aggravating.
Men showing back up once the danger had passed and expecting that wifey-mommy would still make them lunch and wash their dirty underwear.
is there an english version of this? i think i saw that one.
Downhill (2020)
This is one of the greatest comedies ever made
pretty certain my ex would have thrown me and kids into the avalanche.
Most people run away from danger, it’s a basic survival skill, it takes a lot to face danger.
Vern Reimer Is it “most people” or “most men”?
I was in a mass shooting event one time. This was at Universal Studios in the 90s (some were wounded, nobody killed).
Most people around me ran toward the shooter – not out of bravery, but curiosity. I was one of the few who ran in the opposite direction.
I’d like to think I would have prioritized my loved ones if they’d been with me, but I guess you never truly know until you’re in that situation.
Tammy Smith Karn From personal experience, it’s almost everyone.
Then why do women most of the time protect their child/children first? Are they not “people”?
Wow…the beginning of another “me too” moment?
Juan Serrano
Great film
That was such an interesting, albeit depressing, movie.
Yes. Movies! Fiction! Wee. But… reality? 90 % (probably more) acts of heroism are done by men. That’s not me fighting the gender war or tweaking one sex or the other. Feel free to Google. This has been studied and verified over and over and over… despite this movie script and comments section. And, BTW, both my wife and me would charge into a burning building to save our children… or somebody’s else’s… and then we’d joke about who did what better over a good bottle of wine, though I’d probably get a good scotch.
Ted Miller you mean more acts of heroism are reported as being done by men
Brenda Mae and reported by men! 😉
Jannien Weiner definitely!
Ted Miller you are misinterpreting studies. Good grief. I looked them up.
Brenda Mae No you didn’t. You were frustrated by reality… so you want an edit… as in “what percentage of acts of heroism are done by men” Answer: Based on awards for extreme civilian bravery, about 90% to 92% of recognized acts of physical heroism are performed by men. These numbers come from studies of official registries like the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, which tracks people who risk their lives to save others.While men make up the vast majority of those recognized for extreme physical bravery, research shows the statistics vary depending on the type of heroism: Extreme physical rescue: Men perform roughly 90% of highly dangerous, spontaneous rescues of strangers, such as pulling people from burning cars or rushing into fires. Everyday helping: Women are equally likely, and often more likely, to perform other types of risky but less immediately fatal prosocial actions. This includes Peace Corps volunteering, donating kidneys, or rescuing family members.Psychologists note that while men are more frequently recognized for high-risk acts of physical rescue, both men and women perform heroic acts. The differences often reflect social roles, physical risk-taking tendencies, and the types of situations people encounter.
So at this point… do you go, “Oh. Yeah. You’re right. I will go forth and not debate issues just because I really, really want something else to be true”?
Ted Miller You’re not impressing anyone
Ted Miller https://www.newscientist.com/article/1973588-sinking-the-titanic-women-and-children-first-myth/
Luke Anthony He just called out her lie. We don’t need to bash men in general just because some were less protectative of others.
Luke Anthony I’m not trying to impress someone. I’m trying to alert people that identifiable truths often exist outside of a movie script or agenda-driven journalism, right or left. As in: It’s an existential truth that men run toward danger to save people, family or not, at a notably high rate. A movie script that shows a man acting like a coward is fine. Perhaps entertaining as a “what if?” But when people think (or pretend to think) it represents a larger gender truth when it doesn’t, it becomes a false narrative. You might have noticed there are a lot of those on the right and left these days — Tucker vs. Piker — though perhaps you ignore the ones on your side. False narratives, in my humble view that tries not to impress anyone, are bad. Sorry if that bothers you.
LaNell Martin OMG, you spell our name correctly!
Ted Miller but that’s because most women’s acts of bravery are “not recognized.” I.e. dont fit the narrative.
Ted Miller You have your own definition of the word heroism, which is a very odd one. Donating a kidney is at least as heroic as fighting a guy in the subway. Sitting next to a woman who’s being harassed in the subway and pretending she’s your friend is as heroic as challenging the harasser to a fistfight.
Julia McFadden Bingo! Men are more violent, doesn’t mean they are more heroic.
Ted Miller a hit dog always hollers lmao
Ted Miller I think you’re right but fear it’s changing. I think the number of women and children v me surviving the Titanic, if it happened today, would be a certainly different statistic.
I saw a “comedy” that sounds exactly like this set-up with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell. It was awful and one of the most unfunny comedy movies I’ve ever seen.
David Schrimpf Yes, it was an unfortunate remake of this one called Downhill (2020).
Yes. The movie was bad.
Seinfeld show, George’s Fire scene 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TuEWtXBT_0
Wasn’t there a will Ferrell and Julia Louise Dreyfus movie about this?
Amy Belanger Lynch Yes, it was an American remake.
Anywhere But Hollywood similar outline but different enough to enjoy both as separate stories
I was surfing with a boyfriend who saw a shark and left without even telling me. I didn’t marry someone like that. I had kids with a protector type. He’s always between us and perceived danger. We had a break in and I ran to tell him someone was in our kitchen and he got him in a hold until the police came because the children were sleeping in the other side of the house.
I thought the same thing when he grabbed his phone!!🤬
Is this an example of expectations that men who are treated like the second in charge of the house and family being expected to become first in charge in dangerous situations ?
Karen Ratten
I think it’s about the fantasy of the heroic man. The man who would pick up his whole family and carry them to safety…while buying flowers for his wife and reading the kids a bedtime story, and doing the dishes and…
I’ve been in a dangerous situation, and all the men reacted instantly. Their bodies hard-wired to react to danger. Like their ancestors who would have to run away from an angry bear. They were clear of the disaster in seconds. The women just stood there staring with their mouths open, waiting for certain death. Or for someone to swoop down and rescue them.
Of course, individuals are different, and I noticed a couple of women among the men, and vice versa.
After that, I realized that the real hero isn’t the imaginary man who fights off hordes of zombies with an AK47, or wrestles an escaped tiger with his bare hands.
It’s the man who decides not to buy a house next to the zombie virus research lab. Or who does a proper job of servicing the tiger’s cage at the zoo. Or who doesn’t take his family on a skiing holiday in the middle of avalanche season.
But those kinds of men are not the fantasy, and they aren’t celebrated in the same way that imaginary men are. It’s like the millennium Bug. Where tens of thousands of people worked hard to make sure that the year 2000 bug didn’t collapse society, and they succeeded. And no one noticed, because we only perceive reality where it makes itself impossible to ignore.
As we all saw when Trump slinked away in a catering cart without telling anyone when and leaving his Cabinet and reporters to die on Air Force One lol.
The “male protector” nonsense is precisely that. As any woman who has either been protected by or stepped in to protect another woman… and how often women are failed by the very men who should be protecting them.
Just now in 2026 a young girl threw herself over a dog to save it during Columbian earthquake. The dog survived. She died. In Jabalpur boat capsize a mother hugging her baby was found drowned. The thing is mother’s are life givers.
I don’t think it’s a matter of male bravery. Why should men be any more or less brave than women? It’s a matter of caring – if you run away from your family during a crisis, to save yourself, it doesn’t bode well for the relationship whatever sex you are.
Excellent film, one to remember
Sonia Seoud Hamza فاكرة ده؟
شفناه مع بعض أعتقد