Palmarès
Every year since 1997, the festival jury has been faced with the important missions of choosing the winners, to be announced on the closing night. It awards the following prizes:
MONGOLIE, LA VALLÉE DES OURS
This is the Grand Prix of the festival. The winning film will be screened after the closing ceremony.
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Director of the Red Taiga protected area in Mongolia, Tumursukh has taken on the mission of preserving natural spaces and wild animals by converting former hunters into Forest Guardians. A slow evolution of mentalities suddenly compromised by the intrusion of a family of bears in a village …
DE L’OMBRE À LA LUMIÈRE
This prize for technical quality is awarded in memory of the climber Alain Estève, former head of GMHM (Groupe Militaire de Haute Montagne) who lost while climbing in 1997.
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Dive into the mind of French alpinist Charles Dubouloz as he acheves Rolling Stones (5.10 A3, or M8, 1100m) a rarely repeated route on the fabled north face of the Grandes Jorasses above Chamonix, France.
He spent six days with five bivies on the wall, pressing on through strong winds and low temperatures of -30°C (-22°F), sustaining some frostbites to achieve one of the most acclaimed winter solo ascent in the Alps. « I’m scared, I quiver, I’m cold…but I have this intense drive to set foot on the summit”
UPURKUSHUN
Founded in 1933 in Paris, TITRAFILM specialise in subtitling, localisation, accessibility and post-production. TITRAFILM are proud to be the film festival’s Official Technical Partner.
TITRAFILM will reward the winning producer of the Prix Espoir with post-production audio services worth €4 000.
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A team of eight French men goes on expedition to Peru to travel, discover and ride high peaks.
Funny and dynamic, this movie tell about this team story in the middle of the Andes, high perched on some of the most beautiful mountains in the world. A human and sporting adventure carried by the ride, that’s Upurkushun.
FÉLIX ET CHÉPA
For the past ten years the Ushuaïa TV Channel has
supported the festival by giving an award for best director, with the winning film being broadcast on the channel. The film is chosen by the editorial team of Ushuaïa TV.
Felix is a French engineer who built his own bike-house. A canoe-bicycle, atypical way of travel to meet people. A very modest lifestyle that he shares with his Chicken “Chépa” (I don’t know in French). For this movie, we shared some weeks travelling with him in the Swiss Alps between the mountains and the Rhone.
WILD WATERS
At the entrance for the screening of each film of the competition, members of the public receive a ticket that allows them to vote. Ballot boxes marked « Not at All », « A Little », « A lot », « Loved it » are situated at the Congress Centre exit. The tally of the votes is made in proportion to the number of spectators.
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Adventurer, competitor, daughter, friend, pioneer, hero, and badass human are all words used to describe French kayaker, Nouria Newman. In Wild Waters, we follow Nouria as she prepares to become the first female to run a 100ft (30m) waterfall; we watch her grow from a young, keen Olympic hopeful to one of the greatest kayakers of all times – male or female.
However, running some of the world’s hardest whitewater isn’t Nouria’s biggest life challenge. Realizing that the expectations placed upon her as both an athlete and as a woman weight heavily on her decisions and ambitions, she pushes back to make her own path.
It is this central aspect of her life— this refusal to conform to others’ expectations— where Nouria is able to use kayaking as a way to transform into her truest self, and become a once-in-a-generation kayaker.
The trophies are different every year, and each of them represents an eagle. For this 26th edition, working sculptor Christian Burger has created three works of art which represent eagles. These will be awarded for the L’Aigle d’Or de l’Aventure, the Prix Alain Estève, and for the Grand Prix du Public. He has been working with Val d’Isère for the past 15 years creating snow and ice sculptures.
