Sundance 2026: ‘The Last First: Winter K2’ Mountain Climbing Doc

by Alex Billington
January 23, 2026

Everyone in the mountain climbing community is intensely aware of the ominous danger of the mountain known as K2. Located in Pakistan, K2 is the second highest mountain in the world just after Mount Everest nearby in Nepal. It’s also known as the deadliest mountain in the world. From acclaimed doc director Amir Bar-Lev, The Last First: Winter K2 is a brand new mountain climbing documentary film premiering at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It tells the story of the tragic 2020-2021 K2 climbing season, specifically about the events during the attempt to summit K2 in winter. It’s an insane endeavor. Climbing K2 during the calmer summer season is already dangerous enough, attempting in the winter is basically a death trap. Despite the risks, there are climbers who just had to try anyway, because it was the final no-one-had-done-it-yet victory left in the world of mountain climbing. Hence the “last first” mountain climbing achievement to pursue. But this pursuit left many people frozen to death. This documentary is ultimately about how the egos and obsessions within the mountain climbing community are ruining everything about the experience.

If you’re a mountain geek like me, then you’re already familiar with K2. This is far from being the first movie made about this dangerous mountain – there have actually be quite a few movies made about K2 over the years. The Summit documentary premiered back at Sundance 2012 about another tragic climbing season that left 11 dead. There’s the actual feature film called K2 from 1991 about another series of deaths. The doc K2: Siren of the Himalayas also debuted in 2012. Plus there’s the classic movie Vertical Limit from 2000 about climbing K2, and the other doc Beyond the Comfort Zone: 13 Countries to K2 from 2018. Amir Bar-Lev’s The Last First: Winter K2 is the latest to join this adventure sports subgenre and it’s a thrill. But it’s also covering the same ground as seen in these other movies. What makes it really good is how much archival footage they collect & add in, showing all sides of the story, telling the truth about what happened, and not shying away from the reality of how insane it is to try and climb K2. The crux of the 2020-2021 disaster was the arrival of Nepali climber Nims Purja and his Sherpa team, making this pandemic era climb into a spectacle which also drew in tons of influencer climbers (don’t get me started on all of these assholes).

What I appreciate the most about The Last First: Winter K2 is that it’s a brutally honest look at the current reality of mountain climbing and how pointlessly egotistical it has all become. Gone are the days where real climbers with real expertise were doing it on their own terms simply for the love of the sport, the love of mountains, and the comradery of accomplishing something near impossible together. The era of being the “first” to do something is now over. So now what? It’s turned into something even more dangerous and puts everyone in danger because more inexperienced people show up. This film is somewhat of an investigation into what really happened, but it also ends on a depressing note showing us that without any more “first” achievements to chase, people are just putting their lives at risk for no reason anymore. I’m sad about what happened and I wish it didn’t happen. It’s fine there’s another K2 doc telling another story about lives lost on the mountain. But I do hope doc filmmakers continue to expand their horizons beyond just telling stories about how deadly it is to climb (e.g. Sherpa in 2015). The doc also doesn’t mention a shocking detail: after this tragic 2020-2021 season covered in this film, there were a record of 145 summits on K2 in a single day in 2022. Showing off by climbing mountains is only getting worse, not any better, despite all of these deaths.

Alex’s Sundance 2026 Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing

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