By Gregory Crofton
“La Liste: Everything or Nothing” is a sequel of sorts. Several years ago extreme athlete Jérémie Heitz decided to make a list of 15 peaks in the Swiss Alps. The goal was to climb each one and then ski down at very high rate of speed. His death-defying ventures were captured in “La Liste,” a film he made with his friends in 2016.
Watch a clip of Heitz ski and you might mistake him for a sailboat in an America’s Cup race. He’s that fast. He charges down steep mountains like one ever had before him.
In 2022, Heitz is back. This time he and his friend, long-time adventure partner Sam Anthamatten, seek out nearly 20,000 feet tall peaks where oxygen is thin and the conditions are deadly. It’s an “Everything or Nothing” type of scenario.
The duo find cathedral-like beauty in the peaks of Peru and Pakistan, all amid a global pandemic. Snow conditions at such high altitudes are new to them and very challenging, so unusual that it forces them to rethink strategic approaches and recalculate their expectations. They even turn back a few times on camera! This is no bullshit extreme sports video.
Director Eric Crosland set out to make a high-stakes documentary and made one. “Most ski films show just ski descent,” he said. “I wanted to show everything behind the scenes … the challenges of working in a high elevation with little oxygen and a frigid environment, with no electricity, with minimal crews, and in some of the most dangerous mountains in the world, during the most challenging time of year in these mountains for avalanche conditions. Covid also really isolated everybody on the film team.”
Backed by the deep pockets of Red Bull, “La Liste: Everything or Nothing” has begun rolling out to a large but limited theatrical release in the United States and around the world.
To find out if there’s a screening coming to a theater near you, click right here.