Stelvio: Crossroads of Peace

The Alps

The Alps – wild mountains, extreme lives, but also a magical world. This majestic mountain range connects eight countries and reaches heights of up to 4,000 metres above sea level. At a length of 1,200 kilometres, the Alps form both a connecting bridge between western and eastern Europe and a high barrier between southern and central Europe. The mountains act as a mighty water reservoir and continental watershed, feeding innumerable rivers that flow into three different oceans. Their highest peak, Mont Blanc, is surrounded by long, soaring mountains with ice-covered slopes. These great summits are just one reason the so-called “Roof of Europe” continues to fascinate – across the continent and around the world. The incredible diversity of landscapes, flora and fauna makes the Alps a unique natural treasure at the heart of Europe.

Climbing Iran

Nasim is a free climber, the only woman able to open new routes in Iran. She’s facing a double mountain to climb, both physical and cultural, as her passion collides with the strict policies concerning women freedom in her country. And she has a dream: open a new route in the Alps.

La Sorcière Blanche

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...

The Six Great North Faces of the Alps

Six big north faces of the Alps. The film consists of six films: "Die Wand der Wände" (Eger by Robert Jasper, Roger Schäli), "Das letzte Wort hat der Berg" (Matterhorn by Michael Lerjen, Jorge Ackermann), "Selig, wer in Träumen stirbt" (Grandes Jorasses by Felix Berg, Robert Steiner), "Licht und Schatten" (Piz badile by Hansjörg Auer), "Grenzen der Felskletterei" (Drei Zinnen by Alexander Huber) and "Der zerfallene Berg" (Petit Dru by Steve House, Andy Parkin).

Chamonix - Mont Blanc, Une histoire de conquêtes

White Winter

In southern Germany, winter can still be admired in all its glory every year. With its white coat of snow and icicles and myriads of small crystals that look like geometric works of art. In the valleys and on the slopes the snow is still so thick every year that the alpine huts are snowed in up to the windows. Cows and dairymen are safe in their farms at lower altitudes. But not the wild creatures of the mountains! They need strategies to survive the cold season and to defy snow masses, cold and ice. And some seem to do it so easily that they even raise their young in the middle of winter. But how do animals, plants and fungi cope with the annually recurring ice age, which from our perspective is a time of need? The many adaptations in nature prove that winter is an integral part of the natural cycle of the year and the living environment of species. They are adapted to cold and frost. That is why the animals and plants at the edge of the Alps suffer particularly from climate change!

The Alps - Climb of Your Life

In 1966, John Harlin II died while attempting Europe's most difficult climb, the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland. 40 years later, his son John Harlin III, an expert mountaineer and the editor of the American Alpine Journal, returns to attempt the same climb.

Gary Hemming, le beatnik des cimes

The American mountaineer Gary Hemming marked the era of the 1960s. The story of this "exceptional" character is intimately linked to that of the rescue of the two German mountaineers on the west face of the Drus, in 1966, a rescue which he had took the initiative. While the official emergency services of the EHM try to reach them from above, a pirate rope made up of Gary Hemming, René Desmaison, Lothar Mauch, Gil Bodin, Mike Brurke, François Guillot, the filmmaker Gérard Bauer organizes to join them from below and succeeded after a fierce struggle the rescue. The press seizes the event and elevates Gary Hemming to the rank of national hero. All the newspapers feature this big guy with a cool attitude, mismatched clothes, jovial smile and long blond hair on the front page. From then on, he was nicknamed: "the beatnik of the peaks".

Profession grimpeur, Eric Escoffier

A documentary portrait of the legend Eric Escoffier at the height of his mountaineering career. A true athlete, Escoffier has comprehensive, cutting-edge preparation in three different climbing disciplines: rock climbing, ice climbing and solo free climbing, without any safety devices. Philippe Lallet's camera follows Eric in his performances and in his preparation for one of the first La Sportroccia climbing competitions, in 1985 in Bardonecchia in Italy.

The Maribor Uprisings

Equal parts film, conversation, and social experiment, this interactive documentary uses footage shot by activists in the crowd of the Maribor uprisings, a 2012 to 2013 Slovenian protest, to pull you into the fray, where you must collectively decide what happens next.

Refuges

Out Of Europe

Looking at whether the history of early human evolution should be rewritten. For decades, most experts have been convinced that Africa is the cradle of mankind and many fossil finds from Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Chad seemed to prove it.

Codelli

Codelli is a feature-length docudrama about a little-known film project by Slovenian inventor Baron Anton Codelli. Together with filmmaker and adventurer Hans Schomburgk he filmed in Togo in 1914 the first live-action film in Africa, which possibly inspired James Rice Burroughs for his novel on Tarzan. In the company of three Codelli’s descendants and actor Primož Bezjak, we traced the fate of Codelli’s film, brought the remains from Togo and Berlin to Ljubljana and used the Green Screen technology to bring to life 15 live-action scenes based on 600 Codelli’s museum photographs.

The World of Gaston Rébuffat

The World of Gaston Rébuffat is a documentary on mountaineering which takes place at Gendarme Du Pic Du Roc and Grande Candelle. Directed by Gilles Chappaz in 2009 and produced by Seven Doc, we find Christophe Profit, Françoise Rébuffat, Thierry Renault, Jean-Olivier Majastre, René Vernadet, Sam Beaugey and many others. Friendship of his rope companions, friendship of the mountain, friendship of all of nature, he spoke of the mountain with simplicity and happiness. A precursor, a visionary, Gaston Rébuffat was a resolutely committed person, without ever having spoken of an exploit, let alone a fight (among other achievements, he was the first to climb the six north faces of the Alps in a lifetime as a mountaineer).

The Alps from Above: Symphony of Summits

The most important mountain range in Europe is more than a holiday destination for sports and relaxation. The Alps are not just an unpredictable force of nature against which humans have to assert themselves again and again, or an area steeped in history, but also a landscape that enchants. The documentary takes a foray through the history and geography of the Alps.

Laibach: The Videos

Laibach is a Slovenian avant-garde music group associated with industrial, martial, and neo-classical musical styles. They formed on June 1, 1980 in Trbovlje, Slovenia (then Yugoslavia). Laibach represents the music wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) art collective, of which it was a founding member in 1984. The name "Laibach" is the German name for Slovenia's capital city, Ljubljana.

Where to Invade Next

To understand firsthand what the United States of America can learn from other nations, Michael Moore playfully “invades” some to see what they have to offer.

Grimpeurs

In 1961 the southern face of the Central Pillar of Mont Blanc was still unclimbed. Two roped parties of climbers decided to come together to attempt to open a new route. Four days of violent storms caught the climbers just 80 metres from the summit. Of the seven climbers, only three returned home. One of the most intense and dramatic events in the history of climbing relives on the big screen, thanks to accounts and images of the feat.

Cows on the Roof

Herdsman Fabiano will be a father soon. He owns fifty goats and eight cows and is trying his best to produce the alpine cheese that his hippie parents made a name for themselves with in the '70s, in an isolated valley of Ticino. But nothing is going the way it should. He's in debt, and feels guilty for a fatal accident which occurred the previous year, which haunts him. How can he and his girlfriend build a life together under such difficult circumstances?