FINE LINES

What could compel us to abandon our most basic instinct for self preservation? It’s not about adrenaline or thrill seeking. There is something far deeper that drives the world’s most elite group of mountain adventurers to take life threatening risks. In the face of shifting winds, sheer granite cliffs, and impossible odds, they climb. Each for their own reason, but every one connected by the vertical world. In this rarefied air, these athletes are fundamentally changed, not just as climbers, but as human beings.

For nearly three years, director Dina Khreino interviewed these world-class athletes, listening to what compels them to leave behind families, friends, and everyday comforts, to risk everything for a fleeting glimpse into the unknown. What she found was a tribe, a diverse group of professional adventurers and amateur philosophers, forged by the ultimate test of body, mind, and spirit. At times brutally honest, other times pensive, these athletes’ stories reveal the triumph of the human spirit, and the profound and unique connection formed as they overcome the world’s fiercest physical and mental obstacles.