The Last Expedition

Poland, Switzerland, Nepal, India, Italy, Austria2024documentary95'Panorama polskiego dokumentu (2024)

Wanda Rutkiewicz, the most outstanding Polish mountaineer, went missing on 13 May 1992 on her way to Kangchenjunga. Her body was never found. Her mother supposedly said that if Wanda had not come back, it means she decided to join a Buddhist monastery. The film director, Eliza Kubarska, a mountaineer herself, sets out to follow the same route. She talks to witnesses of the past events and confronts them with popular theories of Wanda’s disappearance. Is it possible that she is still alive? The narrator of the documentary is Rutkiewicz herself, who kept an intimate audio diary of her expeditions.

directed by: Eliza Kubarska
Polish director, artist and mountaineer. Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Wajda School in Warsaw. The director of internationally awarded documentaries, whose premieres and screenings took place at prestigious festivals from Hot Docs and LA Film Festival, to IDFA, Visions du Réel and the Krakow Film Festival. She has collaborated with ARTE, ZDF and HBO television. Author of such films as ‘Badjao. Ghosts from the Sea' (jury prize at Hot Docs), “Wall of Shadows” (winner of 30 international awards, including the Zürcher Filmpreis for best director) and “The Last Expedition”. In 2023, she received the Grand Prix of the International Alliance of Mountain Film Festivals for outstanding achievement in filmmaking. She has participated in expeditions to the Karakorum, Himalayas, Greenland and the High Atlas Mountains, among others.
cinematography: Piotr Rosołowski, Marcin Sauter, Małgorzata Szylak
editing: Bartosz Pietras
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