‘The Last First: Winter K2’ Review: A Mountain-Climbing Documentary With More Tragedy Than Vertigo
Variety | 23.01.2026 02:33
In the past decade, the mountain-climbing documentary has become a genre unto itself. Spectacular movies like “Free Solo,” “The Dawn Wall,” and the 2024 Sundance knockout “Skywalkers: A Love Story” (about rooftoppers who scale the world’s tallest spindly skyscrapers, a feat so dangerous that they could be climbing earthly peaks) are like the world’s dizziest action films. They exert an appeal that might be summed up by the line: Come for the heart-in-the-throat vertigo, stay for the human drama…but also stay to explore the question, “What sort of a person pursues this much vertigo?” These movies have a don’t-look-down appeal that’s at once awesome and terrifying.
