Bernard Prud'Homme

Roger Frison-Roche born in Paris in 1906 and moved to Chamonix at the age of 17. He was quickly adopted by local mountaineers and became the first guide in the Company not to have been born in the valley. He is also an insatiable explorer, in love with landscapes and peoples, having traveled from the Hoggar to the Sami camps in Lapland. And the author, among others, of the famous adventure novel Premier de Cordée! This documentary, made up of archive images and interviews, exposes the prolific life of a man who communicated his passion for the mountains by all possible means. A young journalist from Chamonix follows in the footsteps of Roger Frison-Roche. She meets people who knew him and others who followed in his footsteps: guides, filmmaker and author Philippe Claudel, a director, his family; on a trip to Lapland, Algeria, Chamonix.

A team of 12 men, 5 sailors, a doctor, a writer, a film crew, and 3 mountaineers, Jean-Marc Boivin, Thierry Leroy, and Dominique Marchal, set off by sailboat from Mar del Plata in Argentina to reach Riso Patron in Chile, via the Strait of Magellan, the Patagonian Channels, and Falcon Fjord. Their goal is to climb Riso Patron and then make the first crossing of the Campo de Hielo Sur glacier, or Hielo Continental Patagónico, to meet up with the sailors in Puerto Williams on Navarino Island in Chile, a village at the end of the world. After three attempts and an accident for Leroy, who was repatriated, they gave up, crossed the glacier and rejoined the boat, to set off for Cape Horn to climb the South face, knowing that the weather was good one day a month... On January 20, 1983, Jean-Marc Boivin and Dominique Marchal succeeded in making the first ascent of the South face of Cape Horn.

The French High Mountain Military Group (G.M.H.M.) expedition to Everest in 1981, led by General Pierre Astorg, took place on the north face of the mountain. Fifteen military climbers participated in this expedition, which lasted approximately ninety days. Their goal was to reach the summit by following a siege approach, but despite their efforts, the expedition failed to reach the summit. The French military, engaged since the beginning of March on the north face of Everest (8,848 meters), gave up less than 300 meters from the summit. The climbers, Jean-Claude Mosca, Hervé Sachetat, and Hubert Giot, gave up on setting up Camp 7, the last planned intermediate camp, at 8,600 meters. Poor weather conditions and the physical condition of the expedition members were the reasons for the failure of this meticulously prepared expedition...

The most legendary 'sequence' ever achieved by a mountaineer: on 12 and 13 March 1987, in 40 hours, 26-year-old Christophe Profit managed to climb three of the highest north faces in the Alps, in winter: Grandes Jorasses, Eiger, and Matterhorn. But over and above this 'coverage' of the feat, we discover the wings, the story behind the project, the peaks and troughs of the preparations for it, and the personality of the man behind the climbs, a dancer on sheer rock faces, focusing all the energy and reflexes of life itself in his fingertips.

The Transantarctic expedition led by the American Will Steger and the Frenchman Dr. Jean-Louis Étienne took place between July 1989 and March 1990. It was the first successful attempt to cross the entire extent of Antarctica without the use of motor power. Six men of various nationalities, including Viktor Boyarksy (Soviet Union), Geoff Somers (Great Britain), Qin Dahe (China) and Keizo Funatsu (Japan), crossed Antarctica from east to west for seven months on dog sleds pulled by 63 sled dogs, covering a total distance of 6,048 kilometers, with temperatures as low as minus 45 degrees Celsius and long-lasting storms. Their aim was to draw global attention to the continent's endangered future and the early signs of climate change. The documentary relives this great human adventure, which took more than three years from the first meeting of the participants to the final success.

A film about the preparation of the "Trilogy For a Single Man," about the medical and nutritional monitoring of French mountaineer Christophe Profit during his climbing "trilogy" and the period of intensive training that preceded one of the most fabulous "chains" ever made by a mountaineer. On March 12 and 13, 1987, Christophe Profit, then 26, successfully climbed the three largest north faces of the Alps in winter in 40 hours: Grandes Jorasses, Eiger, Matterhorn. But beyond this coverage of the event, it is the behind-the-scenes that is revealed, the story of this project, the ups and downs of its preparations and the personality of its author, a dancer of the verticals, who concentrates at his fingertips the energy and reflexes of life itself.

A team of 12 men, 5 sailors, a doctor, a writer, a film crew, and 3 mountaineers, Jean-Marc Boivin, Thierry Leroy, and Dominique Marchal, set off by sailboat from Mar del Plata in Argentina to reach Riso Patron in Chile, via the Strait of Magellan, the Patagonian Channels, and Falcon Fjord. Their goal is to climb Riso Patron and then make the first crossing of the Campo de Hielo Sur glacier, or Hielo Continental Patagónico, to meet up with the sailors in Puerto Williams on Navarino Island in Chile, a village at the end of the world. After three attempts and an accident for Leroy, who was repatriated, they gave up, crossed the glacier and rejoined the boat, to set off for Cape Horn to climb the South face, knowing that the weather was good one day a month... On January 20, 1983, Jean-Marc Boivin and Dominique Marchal succeeded in making the first ascent of the South face of Cape Horn.

The French High Mountain Military Group (G.M.H.M.) expedition to Everest in 1981, led by General Pierre Astorg, took place on the north face of the mountain. Fifteen military climbers participated in this expedition, which lasted approximately ninety days. Their goal was to reach the summit by following a siege approach, but despite their efforts, the expedition failed to reach the summit. The French military, engaged since the beginning of March on the north face of Everest (8,848 meters), gave up less than 300 meters from the summit. The climbers, Jean-Claude Mosca, Hervé Sachetat, and Hubert Giot, gave up on setting up Camp 7, the last planned intermediate camp, at 8,600 meters. Poor weather conditions and the physical condition of the expedition members were the reasons for the failure of this meticulously prepared expedition...