Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory – Film Listing

The Summit

    • Director

      Nick Ryan

    • Credits

      Producer: Nick Ryan. Writer: Mark Monroe

    • Principal Cast

      Cecilie Skog, Wilco Van Rooijen, Alberto Zerain, Pemba Gyalje Sherpa

  • Category

    Documentary

In 2008 eleven climbers died in twenty-four hours in what was the worst mountaineering disaster ever on K2, the world’s second highest mountain, a tragedy that is the subject of this investigative documentary. Interviews, found footage, and reconstructions build on the here-up-to scant information about the climb in explaining the various accidents that befell the climbers and how they came to be trapped in a high-altitude ‘death zone’. Ger O’Donnell, the first Irishman to conquer K2, is the point around which The Summit revolves as it performs this exploration. An award-winner at the Sundance Film Festival, The Summit mixes an exploration of the psyche which sends people up K2 with a slowly unravelling mystery, as a web of imprecise and even contradictory information is untangled in telling a story of bravery amidst life-threatening risk.

Awards:
World Cinema Documentary Prize for Editing at the Sundance Film Festival 2013                                             Best Feature Documentary at the Irish Film and Television Awards 2013

95 minutes, Ireland/United Kingdom/United States/Switzerland, 2012, Colour

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