From 15 to 21 November, La Rochelle is hosting the 18th edition of the International Adventure Film and Book Festival (FIFAV). If you are there or passing through Charente-Maritime, here are the productions not to be missed during this week of screenings.
Like every year for almost 20 years, La Rochelle hosts one of the biggest adventure film festivals. This year, the FIFAV will host many speakers on the theme of adventure.
Travellers and adventurers, explorers and scientists, directors and producers, authors and illustrators, photographers and artists, they will meet from 15 to 21 November in person after an online edition in 2020. Please note that some sessions will be broadcasted in live streaming (free access) on FIFAV website.
This year, sports will take a considerable place in the programming. Here are five films not to be missed at the FIFAV:
Lost in Karakorum
This film by Antoine Girard, Damien Lacaze and Jérémie Chenal retraces the 1500 km bivouac flight epic of Damien and Antoine, two French paragliders and mountaineers, in the heart of the Himalayas and the Karakorum massifs. This trip is actually a prelude and an acclimatization to try to climb Spantik (7027m) from the nearest town, in two days, thanks to paragliders. Is this really feasible? What are the limits of such an ascent? Can one return unscathed? The film tries to answer these questions.
From sea to girls
The ocean is at the heart of Tahitian culture, its spiritual beliefs and its contemporary life. In the archipelago, riding waves is an ancient, ancestral practice, from which women have gradually been erased. Some have even decreed that it is better to exclude them from the competitions in Teahupoo. Like the times, the activity is becoming feminized and universalized, just in time to prepare for the 2024 Olympic Games. In the Fierro family, all the girls surf, starting with the mother. She is even a pioneer on the small island of Huahine: it was her husband, a former American pro surfer, who passed on his passion. Today, encouraged by their father, it is the three daughters who are taking up the torch.
On the voices of the Americas
Passionate about nature and the world, it was in 2015 that Julien Defourny embarked on an adventure to South America that would change his life. He let himself be guided by the voices of the Americas. 4 years later, after having traveled 46,500 kilometers across the American continent, he wishes to transmit these voices, those of the earth and its living beings. Voices that have opened his mind to the meaning of life and to the solutions for our future as humanity.
Hell & Heaven
Directed by Antoine Chicoye, Michael Darrigade and Alex Lesbats, this production takes us to Nazaré, a mecca for big wave surfing, but originally a simple Portuguese fishing village. Nowadays, it is known to receive the biggest waves in the world, and welcomes the world surfing elite who come to challenge these water monsters. Among them, one woman, Justine Dupont continues to make her way to becoming the best surfer in the world.
Climbing blind
Jesse Dufton was born with poor eyesight, estimated at 20 %; by the time he was 30, his vision had progressively deteriorated to a mere perception of light. However, this did not prevent him from pursuing his passion for climbing. While his eyesight degenerates, he trains more and more and never stops progressing. Today, guided by his fiancée, he sets himself a huge challenge: to be the first blind person to climb the iconic Old Man of Hoy in Scotland. A climbing story as much as a human adventure.
Bonus film: The Call of the Arctic
Saint-Malo, June 2020, "Northabout", a 15m aluminium sailboat built for ice, is ready to cast off for a North Atlantic crossing to the Arctic. Its mission: to meet with local populations in order to document climate change and install weather stations to study the winds coming from the polar ice cap. This ship has already made two trips around the North Pole. It knows the way, but the same cannot be said of its young crew, who have never sailed in the Arctic and half of whom have never set foot on a boat. Heading for Greenland.
