‘First on Everest’ awarded Grand Prix of the Bansko Mountain Film Festival

After seeing the 33 films from the festival program, the decision was fixed on 26 November 2011: Gerald Salminas “First on Everest”, a coproduction of taglicht media and preTV on the German-Austrian search for Andrew Irvine in 2010 receives the Grand Prix!

The 11th International Mountain Film Festival in Bansko took place from 23 to 27 November 2011 at the foot of the Pirin Mountains. More than 100 films from more than 30 countries have been shown, including the best productions of 2010 and 2011 in the fields of adventure, extreme sports and culture of mountain peoples from all over the world.

For “First on Everest”, his new tribute to breathtaking mountains, our director Gerald Salmina traveled to the highest mountain in the world. He was fascinated by the rumors surrounding Andrew Irvine and George Mallory, the two men who were said to have been the first people on Mount Everest. Background of the trip was a discovery made by German geologist Jochen Hemmleb during an expedition in 1999 at Mount Everest. He found a dead body buried in the ice below the summit. What made Hemmleb’s discovery so sensational was the fact that the corpse he discovered was the body of George Mallory.

As early as 1924, Mallory began a daring expedition to the summit, together with his partner Andrew Irvine. The two men, however, never returned, becoming the first tragic hero on the slopes of Mount Everest. No one knows if they ever made it to the summit. In the search for concrete evidence for this theory, Gerald Salmina and Jochen Hemmleb return to the Everest for the film “First on Everest” to air in the death zone below the summit one of the greatest secrets in the history of mountaineering.