Paweł Wysoczański - Poland / 2015 / 73 mts
On 24 October 1989, Jerzy Kukuczka dies during the Lhotse expedition. It was the
first time when he went to the Himalayas with money, equipment, and as a really
famous person.
The documentary by Paweł Wysoczański does not, however, concentrate on the
mystery of the Himalayan mountaineer's death. It shows a person who climbs up,
higher and higher - literally, but also metaphorically and symbolically. From a
bootblack to a millionaire, from a socialist worker to an international media star, from
the man who climbs without any money and equipment to the real competitor of
Reinhold Messner in the competition to climb the Crown of the Himalayas and the
Karakoram. Interviews with family and friends, archives, photographs, recordings,
excerpts from television programmes and interviews make up the portrait of the
Himalayan mountaineers in 1980s. It is also the image of the times in which they lived
- hard and colourful at the same time, when idealism was valued more than fame.
