K2: The Impossible Descent

For nearly three years, director Dina Khreino interviewed world-class mountain climbing athletes, listening to what compels them to leave behind families, friends, and everyday comforts to risk everything for a fleeting glimpse into the unknown. What she found was a tribe, a diverse group of professional adventurers and amateur philosophers forged by the ultimate test of body, mind, and spirit. In the face of shifting winds, sheer granite cliffs, and impossible odds, they climb. Each for their own reason, but every one connected by the vertical world. In this rarefied air, these athletes are fundamentally changed, not just as climbers, but as human beings.

Ever since the ice age, skis have been an irreplaceable tool for humans, but due to global tendencies skiing has changed a lot taking us to – urban skiing. The main character reflects the events that skiers have to face in their quest for adventure, overcoming the boundaries and stereotypes set in society. The film is a peculiar mixture of genres, which allows the boundaries of reality and fiction to merge. Storyline is dominated in two sides – a space where the main character lives and the other 50 locations over Latvia and Estonia. Movie surprises the viewer with breath-taking urban skiing action. The filming is done under challenging circumstances - pedestrians, police...., and the operators mostly have only one chance to capture the frame.

Starting from the Swiss village of Zermatt, two people and a guide make a perilous ascent of the Matterhorn. Local villagers mount a torchlight rescue of a British couple trapped on the famous mountain. Irving Allen shot footage for this documentary while filming his feature film 'High Conquest'. Filmed in Ansocolor, the documentary won the Academy Award for Best Short Film in 1947.

Nanga Parbat 80, La revanche de futur

Little Karim

Apö Karim, Ambassadeur de l'Himalaya

Mister Karim

Dans la voie, Portrait d'un guide au travail

This documentary tells via the testimonies of people who knew him (like Simone Moro, his companion during his last ascent), the life, the mountaineering exploits and the very tolerant character of Anatoli Boukreev. This famous mountaineer has made more than twenty-one ascents on mountains of 8,000 m altitude, without using supplemental oxygen, and has reached the summit of Everest four times. In 1996 he saved the lives of many climbers in a group led by Scott Fischer during their attempt on Everest. The documentary is based on footage shot during his tragic last ascent of Annapurna in Nepal in 1997.

The documentary gives a detailed description of the conquest of K2 climbing from the north edge on the Chinese side of the mountain. The climb - that proceede well for the first days without too much difficulty even because the weather was good - was extremely hard and took over 30 days in July and August.

Adventuring to undiscovered peaks together, plotting midnight-raids on inner-city handrails, lapping your home run until that last ray of sunshine disappears behind a distant ridge - Skiing is Collective. Some call it a tribe mentality, others call it a shared sense of purpose. This film is our definition, written by a diverse team, each with their own ideas, their own forms of expression. "The Collective" is more than a sum of its parts. No matter who you are or where you come from - it feels good to be part of something special.

Dubbed ‘The Mountain God’, the Citadel is a stunning 3000m peak in one of the remaining untouched corners of the Great Alaskan Range: The Neacola Mountains. Due to their typically poor conditions and remote location are largely unexplored. Matt Helliker and Jon Bracey are one the UK's most formidable partnerships in alpine climbing with many world class ascents to their names from the UK to the Alps and the greater ranges. Their objective is to make the first ascent of the extraordinary 1200m long north-west ridge.

René Collet, skier member of the French team, guides a friend from the summit of the Aiguille du Midi. This descent is an opportunity to focus on the remarkable elements of the terrain: the cable car and its work still in progress, the surrounding peaks (Capucin, Mont Maudit, Mont Blanc). The two skiers stop regularly, here to observe climbers scaling the south face of the Aiguille, there to visit the Cosmiques Laboratory. They even take the time to rescue a skier stuck in a crevasse at the Séracs du Géant, before continuing their descent in style onto the Mer de Glace.

The story of the ascent of the Aiguille de la République by mountaineers Jacques Fromentin and Michel Bastien. The Aiguille de la République, in the Mont-Blanc massif, culminates at an altitude of 3,305 meters among the Aiguilles de Chamonix group of summits. In the Fontainebleau forest, children learn mountaineering techniques on the bouldering climbing site. In 1954, rock climbing was also practiced in the Chamonix valley. The Montenvers train crosses the viaduct taking tourists or athletes to the Mer de Glace viewpoint. The two climbers take an approach step and reach the Envers des Aiguilles refuge. They then climb this steep and smooth wall, progressing along the ridge. On the platform, a rope throw allows them to climb up and sit at the top to dominate the panorama. Then the return: abseiling from the summit block.

Three years after the 1959 expedition, abandoned 350m from the summit, Lionel Terray leads a new assault on Jannu, one of the most demanding peaks in the Himalayas. At the base camp, equipment and food rations are prepared. The conditions are optimal and the ascent can begin. The camera follows the progress of the mountaineers and Sherpas as closely as possible, from one high-altitude camp to another: installing fixed ropes, progressing over crevasses, in the middle of frozen towers, vertically down immense ice falls or along the edge of sharp ridges. From 7000m, oxygen bottles become essential, as the difficulty of the climb prevents acclimatization. The expedition is a total success: the majority of its members reach the 7710m summit.

The true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' disastrous and nearly-fatal mountain climb of 6,344m Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.

In 1975, Raymond Renaud, Yves Pollet-Villard, Maurice Gicquel, Maurice Cretton, Jean Coudray, Yvon Masino, Walter Cecchinel, all teacher guides at ENSA in Chamonix, with the help of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, set out to cross the 2 peaks of the highest mountain in India. After 43 hours in a truck, 10 days of slow and difficult approach walking, helped by goats for the portage due to lack of sherpas, the base camp is set up on the Nanda Devi glacier. Two groups share the two eastern and western slopes, 3 kilometers separate them: the goal being to meet between the two summits by the ridge. But on the big day, with the monsoon, bad weather arrives with wind and snow, we will have to give up. Like the French expedition of 1951 which lost two mountaineers, Roger Duplat and Gilbert Vigne, to whom Paul Gendre and Louis Dubosc pay tribute.

Transcending cultural barriers and consistently going against the grain, female Nepali climber Pasang Lhamu Sherpa attempted to summit Everest four times in the early nineties. Although she was not allowed to attend school as a child, Pasang did not let that stop her from pursuing her dreams. After founding her own trekking company in Kathmandu, she blazed a trail for Nepali women via her efforts to summit Everest. Proving how big you can dream and how far you can go to achieve those dreams, she left a legacy not only for the family she has left behind, but for the myriad women following in her footsteps.

Meet the skiers driven by an insatiable thirst for adventure and discovery and explore the essence of being at one with the mountains.

Follow David Lama and Conrad Anker as they make a second attempt to climb the 6,907m Himalayan peak, Lunag Ri. Weather capers, technical challenges and health problems are just a few of the challenges Lama and Anker face.