The true story of Wanda Rutkiewicz, the first woman in the world and the first person from Poland to climb the highest peaks on earth, told by herself.
A man walks in more or less familiar places, walks there as if crossing unknown lands, never encountered before. At each step, he observes the world before his eyes, forcing him to fix it and freeze it in an “other” space and time, on the celluloid of his old camera. This man is Kurt Diemberger, climber and filmmaker of high peaks and distant lands. He is 82 years old, but he lives in the "now" rather than the past, continually exploring the land beneath his feet, in places dear to him in Austria, Italy and the Dolomites, as if he continued his research through the eye of the camera he uses for the observer.
Documentary about K2 tragedy of 1986. On August 4, 1986, Diemberger and Julie Tullis reached the summit of K2 very late in the day. Shortly after starting their descent, Tullis fell and dragged Diemberger down with her. Fortunately, they somehow stopped from going over the edge and spent the night above 8,000 metres. They managed to reach Camp IV the next day, where they were forced to share a tent with six other climbers after their tent had collapsed from hurricane force winds. Tullis died later that night, possibly from high altitude cerebral edema (HACE), and only one other climber, Austrian Willi Bauer, survived the descent with Diemberger. Both climbers suffered severe frostbite during the descent and had to have amputations.
On some peaks in 2003, the statistics are impressive. For the K2 dubbed "wild mountain" or "ruthless mountain", only 240 reached the summit and more than 60 perished in the ascent. An unimaginable rate of one death in four to survive. And these statistics are even worse At the start of the 2004 climbing season, only five talented and determined women had reached the 8,616-meter summit of K2, but only two made it out alive. , they too perished while climbing other peaks of 8000 meters, these five women all disappeared in the mountains.
Many mountaineers as part of their activity have used cameras and films to allow us to participate through images in their adventures and their emotions. Many of them have become true film professionals: Joseph Vallot, Lionel Terray, Marcel Ichac, Renè Vernadet, Jean Afanasieff, Pierre Royer, Denis Ducroz, Kurt Diemberg and many others are among the conquerors of the image of the mountain. The film depicts the passion of these men on the highest mountains in the world... behind the lens.
Kurt Diemberger, born March 16, 1932 in Villach (Carinthia), is an Austrian mountaineer, photographer, film director and writer. He is one of only two mountaineers, with Hermann Buhl, to have made a first ascent on two peaks over eight thousand meters. In 1978, he accompanied the first French expedition that succeeded in climbing Everest in the company of the French Jean Afanassieff, Pierre Mazeaud and Nicolas Jaeger. In 1957, Kurt Diemberger participated in the first ascent of Broad Peak (8,047 meters), in an Austro-German team led by Marcus Schmuck and including Hermann Buhl. The same year, still with Hermann Buhl, he attempted the ascent of Chogolisa (7,665 meters). They could not reach the summit, stopped by the storm at 7,300 meters above sea level. Kurt Diemberger was the last person to see his teammate, who fell to his death on the descent when a cornice gave way beneath him at 7,200 metres. In 1960, Kurt Diemberger made the first ascent of Dhaulagiri as part of a Swiss expedition of which he was the only Austrian member. 26 years later, during the expedition of seven Austrian and British climbers led by Alan Rouse on K2, he was one of only two survivors of the expedition, during the snowstorm that wiped out the group on 10 August 1986, six days after reaching the summit of the mountain. Kurt Diemberger then continued to be active in the world of mountaineering, for example preparing various high-altitude expeditions from the Chinese province of Xinjiang and working on film projects on the mountain, together with his daughter. In 2013, Kurt Diemberger received the Piolet d’or career, Walter Bonatti Prize.
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