2020 Edition | Adventure and Discovery Festival

Editorial

“A taste of freedom

For twenty-nine years now, the Val d’Isère Adventure & Discovery Festival has been inviting us to hit the road.

For twenty-nine years, a host of sailors, divers, mountaineers, sportspeople, pilots, champions, scientists, explorers and artists have taken to the stage at the Henri Oreiller Conference Centre to confirm that ‘the value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one gains by obtaining it, but in what one pays to acquire it, in what it costs’. This quote from Nietzsche opens excerpt number 38 of *Twilight of the Idols*. This passage is entitled ‘My Idea of Freedom’. It seems that no adventurer at the festival will contradict Nietzsche’s ‘idea’!

The filmmakers, explorers and competitors at the festival describe the journey that led them to their goal. It will be more or less difficult, often exhilarating, sometimes painful, always edifying.

There will be the joys and sorrows gathered along the way, the torments and the joys, the wounds, the moments of enlightenment.

Sometimes, dreams are shattered. At other times, the outcome exceeds expectations. Sometimes, the adventurers even discover themselves!

What is lost along the way, the metamorphosis that takes place (like that of a reptile), the inner alchemy, the transformation of the self: all this is the price of adventure, ‘what it costs’.

As a dream is never realised without effort, it is all the more noble for it.

When the jury awards the Golden Eagle at the end of the festival, we must bear this in mind: the sum of the adventurer’s very self that they have poured into their endeavour.

The other lesson from the Aventure & Découverte festival is that feats of endeavour sharpen the mind, strengthen sensitivity and heighten emotion. Listen to these adventurers speaking, having returned from the four corners of the world: the road inspires them! Nietzsche again (at the beginning of *Ecce Homo*): ‘The greatest agility of the muscles has always gone hand in hand with the overflow of creative force. ’ We really ought to have invited him to Val d’Isère – he, the philosopher-traveller who loved the mountains so much. But he was otherwise engaged. ‘Beyond Good and Evil’.”

Sylvain Tesson

Watch the trailer

The 2021 People’s Choice Award THE MONGOLIAN HORSE RIDER Directed by: Hamid Sardar

Whether you liked the film a little, a lot, absolutely loved it or not at all… ‘This year, you are the jury,’ Mr Dugast was heard to say from the Festival stage. To decide the Festival’s Grand Prix, it was the audience who had their say by sharing their thoughts on each film on the Festival’s website.

TITRA FILM 2021 New Talent Award THE AMERICAN HIKE Directed by: Virgile Woisard

TITRA FILM is delighted to be the official partner of the Val d’Isère International Adventure & Discovery Film Festival. The group is proud to present the Director’s Encouragement Award, which consists of
technical services from TITRA FILM.

Day 1Monday 13 April

2,000 DAYS IN PARADISE

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