2024 Nominees

Race to the Summit

Pitch Productions, Netflix

UK

- Sports Documentary

Race to the Summit is a film that’s as much about pace, rivalry, and the media as it is about supreme athletes summiting mountains. Mountains were once climbed ‘because they were there’. But in the days of the 24-hour news cycle, social media, and sponsorship deals, it’s become more complicated. While climbing documentaries have focussed on the confrontation between man and mountain, this is a story of man vs man. It’s treating mountaineering as sport rather than adventure. We wanted to transpose a motor racing film onto the Alps; where the mountains are the race tracks, Dani and Ueli are the drivers, and the goal – for the first time in mountaineering history – isn’t just to be first, but to be quickest. The Daily Mail declared it, ‘a breathless, vertigo-inducing documentary about the drive to be the best.’ Set against the stunning backdrop of the great north faces of the Alps, Race to the Summit is a questioning and revelatory insight into a world few truly understand.