The 23rd St Anton Film Festival celebrates mountains, people, and adventures between the two. This year kicks off by featuring the activities of some pretty hardcore female adventurers, which is of course of special interest to our own all-female crew preparing to cross Greenland.
The organisers of the film festival like to have a live discussion of each movie, and I’ve been asked to go and speak about the changing state of the ice in the Alps and Greenland on the 24th August, associated with the movie Guilt Trip, which you can read about on the salomonTV website.
The movie, directed and produced by Anthony Bonello and Mike Douglas is about the skiers Chris Rubens, Kalen Thorien, Simon Thomson and Pierre Muller and their aim to ski Mt Forel, which is the second highest peak in Greenland and sits right on the divide between the mountains to the east and the wide open ice sheet to the west.
The only thing greater than this group of skiers’ desire to claim a first ski descent on Greenland’s second highest peak is the size of their carbon footprint to get there. Loaded with guilt, they decide to bring along renowned glaciologist, Alun Hubbard, whose hypothesis, if proven, could rewrite popular projections of global sea-level rise. However, the entire expedition is put in question when they arrive in Greenland and discover their objective is beyond the range of all available aircraft.
Helicopters are expensive in Eastern Greenland and fuel is not unlimited. These guys had to haul their gear on pulkas to get close to their target, and their science is all about the impacts of a melting Greenland icesheet so it’s a freeride ski movie with more in common with our scientific traverse of Greenland than you’d think possible!
Here is the trailer:
Movie credits:
Featuring Alun Hubbard, Chris Rubens, Kalen Thorien, Simon Thomson, Pierre Muller
Directed & Produced by Anthony Bonello, Mike Douglas
Executive Producers Bruno Bertrand, Ben Aidan
Narrated & Edited by Anthony Bonello
Cinematography Mike Douglas, Anthony Bonello
Photography Bruno Long
Associate Producer Susie Douglas
Original music by Alex Hackett
Sound design & Mix by Jeff Yellen
Illustration by Jessa Gilbert
Graphics by Blair Richmond
