This year’s NZ Mountain Film and Book Festival will feature the full-length feature version of one man’s epic attempt to ski the most dangerous mountain on earth, K2.

In 2018 Polish ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel clicked into his bindings at an altitude of 8,611m, to make history. The film about his adventure, directed by Steve Robillard, captures a visceral, up-close view of K2 and a nail biting adventure.

Festival co-founder and judge Jo Sedon said the K2: Impossible Descent’ had been awarded the festival’s Grand Prize. 

“It was a combination of a completely out-there adventure, pushing risk to the absolute limit, combined with good filming and great story-telling that blew our minds watching this film,” Jo said. 

“It had you on the edge of your seat the whole way through.”

The festival will run in Wanaka from June 25 to 29, and this year’s lineup promises as much action and adventure as ever.

The film earned the festival’s grand prize.

Also featuring is the Grass Roots award winner ‘Newton Peak’, which follows four Canterbury-based climbers into the heart of the Southern Alps to explore a rarely summited peak, hoping to climb a new route. 

Their journey takes them through the infamous ‘Garden of Eden’ ice plateau, across ‘The Great Unknown’ and through the thick, wild vegetation of the West Coast bush. 

Ross Mackay, the festival’s Adventure Film School lecturer and a member of the judging team, called the film “a great snapshot of a passage through two of New Zealand’s ‘hardest to get’ to plateaus.”

‘Kakapo Crest’ by director Olivia Page follows four women who hike deep into Fiordland in search of a sabre-like peak, and battle through vertical scrub, gale-force storms and dangerously loose rock. 

And director Emily Hopcian’s film ‘Durga: Forging a New Trail’ will premier in New Zealand at the festival. 

The film tells the story of Durga Rawal, the only guide from her village in northern Nepal. Durga’s story is about defying cultural, societal and familial expectations to pursue an independent life.

As well as being held in Wanaka, the NZ Mountain Film and Book Festival will also run in Cromwell (June 30), Queenstown (July 1-3) and will also be broadcast online.

Find out more about the NZ Mountain Film and Book Festival events here or find programmes locally at Wanaka Paper Plus.

PHOTOS: Supplied