Click CC for subtitles. In the winter of 2021, K2 remained the last great prize of high-altitude mountaineering: the only 8,000-meter peak never climbed in winter. Icelandic climber John Snorri Sigurjónsson and the legendary Pakistani father-and-son team Ali and Sajid Sadpara arrive determined to claim that historic first, facing temperatures far below zero, hurricane-force winds, exhaustion and a mountain already infamous for killing even the strongest climbers. But the expedition soon becomes more than a battle against nature. Commercial teams, influencer climbers, professional film crews and a fiercely ambitious all-Nepalese team converge on the same slopes, turning the ascent into a tense contest of strategy, reputation and national pride. As the climb unfolds, the documentary exposes the changing culture of modern mountaineering: the pressure of social media, the commercialization of the world’s highest peaks, the unequal recognition historically given to Western climbers, and the determination of Nepali and Pakistani mountaineers to claim achievements in their own names. The race for the summit culminates in triumph for one team and tragedy for others, leaving five climbers dead and forcing survivors to confront questions of ambition, responsibility and what a “first” is really worth. Built from extraordinary footage shot during the expedition and testimony from those who were there, the film transforms one of mountaineering’s last untouched records into a gripping story about ego, class, nationalism, family and the deadly cost of pushing beyond human limits.
Intrepid adventurer Michael Palin travels through Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, starting on the Khyber Pass and ending five miles from K2 on the Pakistan/China border. He passes through Darra, visits a street dentist in Peshawar, goes bull racing with a Pakistani aristocrat and is almost trampled to death, and finally crosses over the Lowari Pass into the buffer state of Chitral.
Travelling from K2 in Pakistan to Ladakh in India. It is a short distance as the crow flies but, due to politics, a huge loop. He passes through the Sikh city of Amritsar, with its Golden Temple, and through Shimla with its Vice Regal Lodge, Gaiety Theatre and cosy half-timbered tea-houses. He then meets the 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government is in exile.
Humans have long gazed up at the night sky, wondering whether other lifeforms and intelligences could be thriving on worlds far beyond our own. But over the last few decades, ultra-sensitive telescopes and dogged detective work have transformed alien planet-hunting from science fiction into hard fact. We expected to find worlds similar to the planets in our own solar system, but we instead discovered a riot of exotic worlds. Vivid animation based on data from the most successful planet hunter of them all, the Kepler space telescope, brings these worlds into view: puffy planets with the density of polystyrene, unstable worlds orbiting two suns and 1,000-degree, broiling gas giants with skies whipped into titanic winds. But perhaps the most startling discovery was the number of worlds that may be contenders for a second Earth, at the right distance from their sun to have that ingredient so crucial for life as we know it, liquid water. Amongst them, we witness the most tantalizing discovery of all: a so-called ‘super-Earth’, situated in the Goldilocks zone - the area just the right distance from a sun to potentially support life - and with the faint signal of water in its atmosphere.
As the climb unfolds, the documentary exposes the changing culture of modern mountaineering: the pressure of social media, the commercialization of the world’s highest peaks, the unequal recognition historically given to Western climbers, and the determination of Nepali and Pakistani mountaineers to claim achievements in their own names. The race for the summit culminates in triumph for one team and tragedy for others, leaving five climbers dead and forcing survivors to confront questions of ambition, responsibility and what a “first” is really worth. Built from extraordinary footage shot during the expedition and testimony from those who were there, the film transforms one of mountaineering’s last untouched records into a gripping story about ego, class, nationalism, family and the deadly cost of pushing beyond human limits.