Winter K2 film uses up the last mountain first, producers panic
Producers reacting to Amir Bar-Lev's The Last First say the race up K2 in winter used up mountaineering's final record, and have drawn up a shortlist of six replacements.
Mountain documentary producers say Amir Bar-Lev's Winter K2 film has used up the sport's final record, so they have formed a coalition to find six more. The shortlist includes an Everest climb with the phone switched off and a press release that credits everyone equally. The secret sixth first is already being chased by two rival crews who share a director.
"...and then someone asked what we film now, and honestly the room just went cold," a senior unscripted executive told SnarkWire late on Tuesday, still in her coat. "Not K2 cold. But cold."
The room in question was a private screening of Amir Bar-Lev's The Last First: Winter K2, the documentary about the 2021 race to climb the world's second-highest mountain in winter. Sources close to the situation say the credits had barely started before the industry's leading mountain producers realised the problem. The last first is gone. Somebody filmed it. There is nothing left to be first at.
By Wednesday morning the panic had a name. The Coalition for Remaining Firsts, a working group of six production companies and one streaming service, met in a hotel bar and agreed to find, fund and film whatever records are still lying around. Insiders describe the mood as "grief, then budgets".
The shortlist
SnarkWire has obtained the Coalition's draft list of six remaining firsts. A spokesman, Dorian Pell, confirmed it is real and asked that we "respect the process". We do not.
Item one: the first ascent of Everest by a climber whose phone stays switched off for the whole trip. Pell admits this is "ambitious". Several sponsors have already pulled out on the grounds that an unposted summit cannot be proven to have happened.
Item two: the first expedition where every member gets equal credit in the press release. Lawyers for the Coalition say the wording is "technically achievable" but warn that nobody has yet found a climber willing to be listed alphabetically.
Item three: the first high-altitude climb with no brand partner. This one was struck off within the hour. A hydration company had already attached itself to the idea of having no brand partner.
Item four: the first climber to turn back at a sensible point and still be considered interesting. Pell calls this "the big one". Three directors have expressed interest. All three have asked whether the climber could turn back a bit higher up, for the drone.
Item five: the first mountain documentary in which the international team and the local team have the same number of lines. The Coalition's note beside this one simply reads "check with Nepal". Nobody has yet checked with Nepal.
Item six is redacted. More on that in a moment.
A genre in mourning
The film itself is not a celebration. Bar-Lev's account, reviewed this week by the Guardian and the New York Times, follows rival teams on the same slope and the people who did not come home. Reviewers call it a study in ambition, credit and who gets to own a record once it is set.
Those are exactly the themes the Coalition says it has "taken on board". Asked how, Pell said the group had agreed a new rule: in future, any first claimed on camera must be shared fairly with the people who carried the ropes. Then he paused and said the rule itself was a first, and that the Coalition would like it on the record that they got there before anyone else.
A programmer at a major winter film festival, who asked to be identified only as "someone who has sat through a lot of crampon footage", was less sure the problem is real. "Every year someone tells me the mountain genre is finished. Then someone finds a mountain. It is not a complicated business."
"We are not saying there are no mountains. We are saying there are no mountains with a hook."
Pell rejected that reading. "There are plenty of mountains," he said. "There are no mountains with a hook. A hook is a sentence you can say at a party. 'First in winter' is a hook. 'Second in winter' is a Tuesday."
The sixth first
Which brings us back to item six, the one the Coalition would not share. SnarkWire can now reveal, courtesy of a source who left the hotel bar before the bill arrived, what it is.
The sixth remaining first is to make a documentary about a race up a mountain in which only one team turns up. No rivals, no splintered camaraderie, no argument about who stood on the summit six seconds ahead of whom. Just one group of people, going up slowly, and coming back down.
The Coalition believes this has never been done and would be a sensation. There is only one difficulty. Two rival production companies have already left for the Karakoram to film it, each convinced it is alone. Sources confirm both crews have hired the same director, who is said to be "on both call sheets and extremely tired".
Pell was asked whether this undermined the premise. He said no. He said it was, in its way, another first.
