WOP MENDI FILM AWARD

FEDERATIONS OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY AND NAVARRE

Friday December 6 – 19:30 Euskalduna - Auditorio

The 2024 WOP Mendi Film Award will be awarded to the mountain federations of the Basque Country and Navarre. It has been done so in recognition of their historical contribution to mountaineering and mountain values, coinciding with the celebration of the centenary of their founding.

Promoted and championed by the mountain associations of Alava, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Navarre, the Basque-Navarre Mountaineering Federation was created on May 18th 1924 in Elgeta. Nowadays, the Basque Mountaineering Federation (Basque Autonomous Community) and the Navarre Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing Sports collaborate through a permanent body called the Basque-Navarre Union of Mountaineering Sports (UVADEMO).

WOP Award-BBK Mendi Film Bilbao-Bizkaia:

• Edurne Pasaban (2023)
• Eduardo Martínez de Pisón (2022)
• Sebastián Álvaro (2021)
• Fundación Baltistán Fundazioa (2020)
• Nives Meroi e Romano Benet (2019)
• Juanjo San Sebastián (2018)
• Peter Habeler (2017)
• Sir Chris Bonington (2016)
• Josep Manuel Anglada (2015)
• Drawn film by Jeremy Collins (2014)

NUPTSE, L'INACCESSIBLE ABSOLU

2023, France, 67min

Director: Hugo Clouzeau

Hélias Millerioux, Frédéric Degoulet and Benjamin Guigonnet dream of opening a new route on the legendary south face of the Nuptse, an extreme challenge, on a wall verging on 8,000 meters in the heart of the Himalayas. The obsessional quest of three French mountaineers engrossed in their desire to reach the summit.

KAZUYA HIRAIDE Y KENRO NAKAJIMA: TRIBUTE

Friday December 6 – 19:30 Euskalduna - Auditorio

In July 2024, a chapter on K2 came to an end. It was time to come to terms with the loss of Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima on the western ridge of the Karakorum colossus.
‘Gora Mendi!’ “¡Arriba el Mendi!” exclaimed Kazuya Hiraide, full of enthusiasm, when he presented his fantasy, his project, to us here in Bilbao a year ago. As the roulette wheel would have it, the worst of the number came up, and an unparalleled career in the great mountains of Asia and the world was cutshort.
It was the second time that Kazuya visited the Mendi. He shone at the international premiere of the film “Rope” and was a “Ternua Friend”. He is one of us, and that is how he transmitted it too.
Kazuya and Kenro formed a team that we felt remarkably close to, both as a festival, as an International Alliance, and above all, as people.