Great Britain, Journey to the Sources of Mountaineering

Unique shapes, no two the same, formed by the action of water and frost. The water that once ran from the summits in torrents and waterfalls is immobilized for a few weeks. The thing is to be there, in time, just at the moment when they become solid, just before they return to water. A question of balance. Around seven top-level climbers who represent all the richness of the activity, these images will highlight different techniques and different approaches. Although the athletic performance is impressive, it is there only to emphasize the dazzling shapes, the warmth of friendships, the stories of teamwork.

On August 10, 2011, Lionel Daudet set off on the Dodtour, a circumnavigation of France without motorized transport, following the land border and coastline as closely as possible, from the Alps to the Rhine, from the English Channel to the Atlantic, from the Pyrenees to the French Riviera. On November 15, 2012, he returned to his starting point, the summit of Mont Blanc, after traversing the country on foot, by bicycle, through fields and along beaches, by kayak, and by sailboat, sometimes alone amidst breathtaking landscapes, sometimes accompanied on the outskirts of towns. 3,000 kilometers of mountain ridges, forests, and rivers, and 3,500 kilometers of coastline. A 15-month (465-day) journey to take on a physical challenge, explore, and tell the story of what makes France what it is.

Grandes Jorasses. North face. Winter. Three climbers. Five days. Four nights. A route never repeated. This is the setting and the action of a great adventure, the kind that mountaineering sometimes offers, one that pushes the boundaries to the highest levels of difficulty, commitment, and also the spirit of teamwork in the noblest sense of the word. Five days. Four nights. A route never repeated. On Monday, February 13, 2023, Charles Dubouloz, Clovis Paulin, and Symon Welfringer reached the summit of the Grandes Jorasses after repeating the Walker Spur, first climbed by Patrick Gabarrou and Hervé Bouvard in July 1986 and never repeated until then. After five days of climbing, the trio fulfilled a long-held dream, under the watchful eyes of Gabarrou and Bouvard themselves.

In the austere "Horseshoe Cirque", attempts on ice are so impressive and require such a high degree of skill, that after a discrete beginning in 1976, there was a wait of twenty years before new pioneers dared the challenge. Each has returned, marked for life by the extraordinary experience. The opening of The White Witch in January, 2006 by Philippe Batoux, François Damilano and Benoît Robert was the occasion to revisit this emblematic site. Here is an exceptional panorama where incredible ice formations give way to challenging rocky climbs and vibrant testimonials...

Avid for steep slopes, Marco Siffredi (1979-2002) obeys only one rule: not to fall. This gifted kid with hair sometimes blond peroxidized, green or blue clashed in his valley: Chamonix, mecca of mountaineering. His thing was to go up and down on a snowboard. . 90 minutes September 8, 2002, altitude 8848 meters, rare oxygen, his head already brushing the sky and his snowboard running, Marco Siffredi, 23, rushes from the summit of Everest in the Horbein corridor and its slopes at 50 degrees . A year earlier, he had already made the first descent of the mountain on a snowboard. But there remains another corridor… more direct. It's not a challenge, just a reason to be... However, that day, at the top of the roof of the world, his trace is lost...

During a reconnaissance trip, Olivier Balma, a guide and instructor at CMDI, accompanies Erwan Le Lann into the Getu Valley, in the heart of Guizhou Province. They discover a practically untouched site with a unique giant arch filled with limestone tufas. The project takes shape with the agreement of the government and the Chinese Mountaineering Association. It takes a group of climbers two trips to put up 250 new routes of all levels. During the Petzl RocTrip, hundreds of Chinese and visiting climbers get together to climb these routes. The highlight of the event is when the Spaniard Dani Andrada sends his project, Corazon de Ensueno. In front of a big crowd, he frees the extremely difficult eight pitches, all tied in with his partner, Chris Sharma. Since then, the Getu Valley has become a prime climbing destination, thanks to the magnificent routes and to the warm and authentic hospitality of the valley's inhabitants.

For twenty years, the Beghin-Lafaille route on the South Face of Annapurna was considered one of the most difficult and dangerous in the Himalayas. In the autumn of 2013, it was climbed first by Ueli Steck solo, and then by the team of Yannick Graziani and Stéphane Benoist. It is an extraordinary route that profoundly changed the lives of those who tackled it. The film recounts the remarkable convergence of destinies surrounding this climb and explores how such an ascent can transform a life. Drawing inspiration from the experiences of astronauts returning from the moon—who suffered from "absolute achievement" syndrome—the filmmakers sought to understand how the deep-seated drives that compel mountaineers to prepare for and commit to such climbs can shatter at the very moment a lifelong goal appears to have been reached.

Joseph Vallot, geographer, naturalist and mountaineer born in 1854 in Lodève, was a visionary man, full of humor and whose curiosity was insatiable. He had spent some forty years of his life studying the Mont Blanc massif, sacrificing a good part of his fortune to this multifaceted passion. He was notably the first to demonstrate that one could sleep, work and even do science at an altitude of over 4000 meters, at a time when ascents to the summit of Western Europe were still adventurous expeditions. This documentary tribute follows in his footsteps, via the route taken at the time, on foot from Chamonix via the Grands Mulets refuge to the summit of Mont Blanc to the Joseph Vallot observatory nestled at an altitude of 4400m, with a team of guides, journalists and scientists.

The Amazon is the river of superlatives: the longest - 7,025 km, the most powerful, the most indomitable - no dam possible over hundreds of kilometres. Its waters cross the largest tropical forest in the world: the Amazon, “the lungs of the earth”. Going against the current of this gigantism, this documentary is betting on approaching this extraordinary natural space through one of its tiniest productions: the cocoa bean. Scientists, chocolate makers, producers and farmers, many are those who, faced with the deforestation of this unique ecosystem, use this chocolate seed to recreate, on a small scale, human exploitations in harmony with nature. This film tells us about the fight of those who decided to make cocoa the spearhead of environmental defense in Brazil.

The Grand Canyon is a breathtaking natural monument. It's one of the planet’s best-known landscapes, yet we often forget that it tells two billion years of the Earth's history. Geologists Karl Karlström and Laurie Crossey are the leading experts on this. Over the course of 8 days, they descend the Colorado river and tackle hundreds of rapids to unveil the mysteries held in the Grand Canyon, and the place that humans occupy within it.

100 years after Shackleton's South Pole expedition, a mixed crew of adventurers, sportsmen and scientists trace Shackleton's steps. They visit coast at the pole to sail and walk in the harsh conditions of this hostile and yet beautiful environment.