Irish documentary 'The Summit' by Nick Ryan wins major award at Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival

Irish director Nick Ryan's documentary The Summit has won the Best Feature Film award at the prestigious Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in Canada. The film will open in Irish cinemas on the 22nd of November and will be the closing film of this year's Cork Film Festival.

“It was a great honour to receive this award from the Banff Festival," said Nick Ryan. "And we would like to accept it on behalf of all the people who helped to bring this film to the screen, especially those who shared their memories of the traumatic events of 2008.”

The film chronicles a group of mountain climbers as they try to make their way to the top of K2. 11 of them, including Limerick man Ger McDonnell, never returned. The Summit also makes use of re-enactments, interviews and never before before seen archive footage of the climb. It has just been released in the USA where the film has been receiving rave reviews with the LA Times calling the film “Irresistible”, The New York Times “A pulse-pounding success” and the Hollywood Reporter “A heart throbbing cliffhanger”.

Produced by Image Now Films and Pat Falvey Productions, in association with Passion Pictures, Diamond Docs and Fantastic Films, funded by The Irish Film Board, RTE, BAI and the BBC.