Graines d'espoir

Meeting in Chamonix with Éric Escoffier, famous mountaineer of the 80s, victim of a car accident in September 1987. Victim of multiple fractures and total paralysis on his left side, Escoffier managed to walk again, despite the doctors' pessimistic prognoses... The commentary on images of Éric Escoffier in his daily life in Chamonix and archive images and photographs alternates with archive documents, extracts from the films "Profession grimpeur" by Philippe Lallet and "Face nord" by Jean Afanassieff as well as interviews with the protagonist, Rémi Éric Escoffier and Michel Garcia. Great among the greatest, Éric Escoffier, who disappeared in the mountains at Broad Peak on July 29, 1998, will never have been an ordinary man.

Years ago, Jean Marsan had aspirations to be a scholar. He also had a very serious romance going on. His thick-headed, uncomprehending family soon put an end to both of those unacceptable behaviors, and he spent the rest of his youth tending cows on the family farm. Now he is old, his idiot family members have died, and he's about to sell the farm (now his) to a developer. However, there are still cows to take care of until the sale goes through, and he's not as agile as he used to be. When a young local fellow offers to help him with his farm chores, he grudgingly accepts and their initially antagonistic relationship deepens over the summer. The director of this film grew up in the French Alps on a farm similar to this one and has taken care that the details of farm management are accurately and precisely depicted. Of particular interest to cheese connoisseurs is the footage of the two men making a delicious but probably unhygienic local cheese.

André Payraud, born in 1948 in Passy, ​​Haute-Savoie, nicknamed "the swimmer of the impossible," is a major figure in French whitewater swimming, known by the nickname "Dédé the Carpet." He is renowned for his daring descents of large mountain rivers and for having helped popularize the sport from the 1980s onward. His achievements include swimming down the Mont Blanc torrent in 1980, the first in a long series of filmed feats: swimming Everest in 1982; the Ganges in 1985; the Colorado; Annapurna; the Jordan River—no river can stop Dédé in his quest for adventure. For his whitewater exploits, André Payraud was made a Knight of the National Order of Merit and received the Silver Medal for Youth and Sports. Alongside his exploits around the world, Dédé set up the first rafting company in Haute-Savoie in 1982, in Domancy, Session Raft, Aventures Payraud mont-Blanc..

In 1985, André Payraud, a pioneer of whitewater swimming, descended the sacred Ganges River from its source at an altitude of 4200 meters, amidst the ice of Gangotri and astonished pilgrims: the baptism of the 3rd eye.

Two Quebec acrobats embark on an unusual journey through France. Childhood friends, André Fontaine and Michel Leroy find themselves in the Alps. André had been walking around France for three years with a baby bather who spit fire and gave him a line in the street. As for Michel, he was moping around in a Montreal bar. Without admitting it, they needed each other. The duo quickly reunited and traveled to Paris in a Citroën Acadiane, equipped like a house, where fame awaited them. Michel discovers the "Old Country" and his thirst for recognition is coupled with a quest for identity, that of his Breton origins.