Eliza Kubarska won the Best Director award for "K2. Touching the Sky" at the Spanish festival Bilbao Mendi. Her documentary film portrays a group of four people climbing the peak of K2 to get acquainted with the route on which their parents died in 1986.
The festival Bilbao Mendi also awarded Paweł Wysoczański, giving the Best Mountain Film award to his documentary film "Jurek." It shows a person who climbs up, higher and higher – literally, but also metaphorically and symbolically. From a bootblack to a millionaire, from a socialist worker to an international media star, from the man who climbs without any money and equipment to the real competitor of Reinhold Messner in the competition to climb the Crown of the Himalayas and the Karakoram.
"Jurek" was also awarded at Kathmandu IFF, where it won the second place in the international competition. Third place at the festival in Nepal went to Vahram Mhkitaryan for his film "The Shepherd's Song." His documentary film shows the story of Chaczik, who lives in Armenia, high in the mountains, and is a blind shepherd, who, in spite of adversities started a family and leads a peaceful life, every day pasturing his herd of goats on steep mountain slopes, on which he can move without anyone's help. However, it turns out that his son also loses his eyesight and has to go to Yerevan to start learning at the school for the blind.
We would like to invite you to get acquainted with the full list of the award-winners at the festivals Bilbao Mendi and Kathmandu.