Her name is Sophie Lavaud. She is not a professional mountaineer or an elite athlete, but she wants to enter her name in the annals of Himalayan climbing.
There are fourteen. Fourteen 8,000-m peaks. The Himalayan giants, a world where the air is so thin no human can survive for more than a few hours.
Having already scaled thirteen of the Earth’s highest mountains, Sophie Lavaud is just one peak away from the Himalayan grand slam. Will she achieve her goal?
In the spring of 2023, she set off to attempt Nanga Parbat, a formidable, 8,126-m-high peak in the highlands of northern Pakistan. At the age of 55, she is attempting to a break a longstanding curse: every French person who has tried to climb all fourteen 8,000ers has died in the attempt. Every single one, including the best.
So why Sophie? Why should she succeed where everyone else has failed?
We follow Sophie and her Nepalese climbing partner, Sangay Sherpa, during their attempt to climb the steep ice fields and vertiginous rock walls of Nanga Parbat, a difficult and committing peak early mountaineers dubbed the “killer mountain”. The film immerses us in the peculiar world of high-altitude mountaineering, where climbers must tread the fine line between boldness and self-preservation.
Sophie Lavaud – The Final Summit is the gripping tale of Sophie’s final challenge, a 40-day expedition peppered with setbacks. It is also a spectacular human adventure and an intimate portrait of disarming candour.
François Damilano is a mountain guide based in Chamonix and the author of numerous books and articles on mountaineering. After taking part in several films and television programmes as an elite mountaineer (Carnets de l’Aventure, Montagne, Ushuaïa, Des Racines et des Ailes), he moved behind the camera to make his own documentaries. His films provide both a climber’s perspective on high-altitude expeditions and reflections on their participants’ motivations. Analyst and protagonist, he uses his position as participant-observer to immerse the viewer in the reality of climbing the world’s highest mountains.
réalité des plus hauts sommets.
Camera in hand, François Damilano accompanied Sophie Lavaud to the summits of Everest (25 May 2014) and Nanga Parbat (26 June 2023).
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