Meru

A documentary built around a mountain in the Indian Himalayas. Meru has a line. The route called the Shark's Fin has been attempted for years and nobody has reached the summit by it. The problem is technical. The wall is ice first and then mixed rock; a team has to do ice climbing, big wall technique and high altitude hauling all at once. Three men try it. Conrad Anker has been after the route for years; Jimmy Chin and Renan Öztürk go with him. They set out in 2008. They start with twenty days of food and wait seven days in a hanging tent because of a storm. They turn back a hundred metres from the summit. The food is gone and going on would mean death. Then life intervenes. Renan is badly injured on a ski shoot. His skull is fractured, there is a break in his neck, and his speech is impaired. Jimmy is caught in an avalanche. The snow carries him a hundred metres and he digs himself out. Anker's past is inside the narrative too. Years ago he lost his closest friend in an avalanche and built a life with that man's family. They go back in 2011. Renan has not fully recovered, and that is an argument within the team. What the narrative is interested in is not the summit but deciding: what the film really asks is whether one man can trust another. They filmed it themselves. Chin is a climber and a photographer; the camera is part of the load, and that is the film's hardest aspect. The narrative does not romanticise. Death, injury and those left behind are discussed directly. The film won the audience award at Sundance. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes mountaineering documentaries and difficult production stories. Who it is not for: anyone afraid of heights; most of the footage is on a vertical wall and the camera keeps showing the drop.