Norwegian filmmaker Even Sigstad and his producer partner Filip Christensen have been making ski and skate videos since they were wide-eyed teenagers. “Pushing the limit for two decades” is the slogan of their production company Field Productions AS, which will be celebrating its 25th anniversary next year. Their feature credits range from Norwegian box office hit Trango (2025), about the ascent of the one of the world’s tallest rock faces, to Momentum (2024), which follows Bernt Marius, a young athlete who had a foot amputated following an injury, but quickly returned to ‘speed riding’ (similar to paragliding).
The duo have been in Sheffield this week for the world premiere of arguably their most ambitious feature yet, Savage Mountain (screening in the Journeys strand).
This is the story of how the intrepid Norwegian climber Kristin Harila broke mountaineering records in 2023 when she and her Nepalese climbing partner, Tenjen Lama Sherpa, scaled 14 of the world’s highest peaks, all of them over 8000 metres high, in the space of only 92 days.
“It wasn’t [so] many people who believed she would actually do it,” Sigstad recalls the scepticism that surrounded the expedition.
Funders weren’t willing to commit (“they all thought it was too risky”), but Sigstad and Christensen were immediately keen to chronicle Harila’s 14 climbs. They were impressed not just by her ambition, but by her determination to highlight the work of the Sherpas in getting her to the top.
The trip, though, developed a very dark side. At one stage, when they were on K2, Harila and her team had come across an injured Pakistani porter, Mohammad Hassan, from another expedition, who was stranded in the “bottleneck” area of the mountain. They were later accused of leaving him to die.
The death on the mountain was immediately picked up by the media. The incident fed into a familiar narrative about western climbers exploiting local helpers. Harila was subjected to a torrent of extreme misogynistic abuse on social media.
This was a grim time for the climber. “It’ s been hell and a nightmare,” she confesses at the start of the documentary. She began to regret ever taking on the challenge.
“We couldn’t foresee how the whole story would evolve and the controversy around it,” Sigstad reflects on project originally conceived as a straightforward mountaineering story but that turned into something very different and far more complex.
“We could have made an entire film around this controversy,” Sigstad acknowledges.
The documentary footage exonerates Harila and her team. It shows that they spent hours trying to help the porter. This had been shot by Gabriel Torso – although he stopped filming to tend to the stricken man. It also emerged that the expedition on which Mohammad Hassan had been working had been poorly equipped and had violated multiple regulations.
”It is more professional in Nepal than it is in Pakistan. I think that was also one of the reasons for the accident. The climbing community in Pakistan has not reached the same level of professionalism,” the director says.
The documentary includes probing and emotional interviews with Harila in which she talks very frankly about the death of the porter and the aftermath to the expedition (when she suffered a sudden bereavement). The interviews were filmed last autumn.
“It was important that we gave some time because it was a big shock for Kristin and for everyone,” Sigstad explains why it has taken so long to complete the documentary. “Suddenly, one of the main characters in our film died, all this controversy happened and the story was flipped upside down. So we all needed time to process it and to be able to talk about it. It wasn’t the film we planned on when we started filming. Suddenly, we were sitting there with a lot of footage and a story that has pulled in a different direction – it required two years of processing before we could really nail the edit and talk about it in a good way for both us and Kristin – and ask the right questions to her.”
Harila is not the type who will give up on a mission, however daunting the odds against her. “When I sold my apartment to climb these mountains, people thought I was crazy. But when I really believe in something, I go all in,” she says with evident understatement. Unusually, despite her single-mindedness, she is also a friendly and empathetic character who always tries to take care of her team.
Savage Mountain boasts astonishing cinematography. The director of photography was Matias Myklebust and he was working with four leading cameramen, Manish Maharajan, Gabriel Tarso, Sandro Gromen Hayes, and Espen Saur.
“There are only a handful of people in the world who are capable of climbing and who can film in this environment,” Sigstad says. As he knows from his own experience, it is extremely tough to shoot at altitude in sub-zero temperatures. “You’ve got to make sure your batteries are warm. The camera itself can handle it but when the batteries get cold, they die.”
The trick is to keep the batteries close to your body – and to bring plenty of memory cards. Modern cameras are relatively compact but photographers still need to be very fit and determined.
Harila proved an open subject. She had no qualms being filmed when she was ill, exhausted or even when she was throwing up. “She wanted to share everything to show how it is up there.”
A mutual trust grew between the climber and the filmmakers. If something was too personal and too intimate, they would know instinctively when to step back.
At the Sheffield premiere a few days ago, the film was warmly received. Audiences gave Harila a sympathetic response. “We can breathe a little bit,” Sigstad says after of the weight lifted after finally unveiling the documentary.
In the meantime, Harila has rediscovered her love of mountaineering. In the spring, she climbed Everest without oxygen. Her relationship with the Sherpas remains as strong as ever.
“It’s time for her to get some good memories from the mountains and I think she did that this spring,” Sigstad observes.
Whatever else, Savage Mountain reveals Harila’s extraordinary mental and physical toughness – her ability to defy illness and exhaustion. Some of this resilience comes from her hard-driving father who brought her up to be obstinate and self-reliant.
Sigstad suggests these qualities are shared by many other Norwegians. He talks of the hard-working mentality of “people coming from farms or fishing. They’re used to doing the job, being out [there] no matter the conditions, whether it’s wet or cold or rainy. You learn from a young age that you just have to go out and do it. I think that’s kind of common, especially in the rural areas.”
This applies as much to women as to men. “We have some tough women in Norway,” the director signs off.
Savage Mountain was made through Field Productions with support from the Norwegian Film Institute. It is a co-production between Field Productions and Full Story Films, Sky News’ documentary unit. The commissioner was Hayley Reynolds for Sky Documentaries. Executive producers are Vesna Cudic, Siobhan Sinnerton, P.G. Morgan, and Marina Zenovich. The theatrical release in Norway in early September is being handled by Euforia Film.
