The documentary about the struggle to conquer the Shark’s Fin on the northern India peak was long in the making – but offers a rare glimpse of the psychological torment of climbers insistent on pushing themselves to their physical limit

In 2008, Conrad Anker and Jimmy Chin, two of the world’s strongest climbers, partnered up with relative newcomer Renan Ozturk to tackle the Shark’s Fin on Meru, a 21,000-foot knife edge balanced on a mix of technical rock slabs, snow and rotten ice in northern India.

It had never been summited before, and their attempt went about as badly as it could: they ran out of food, suffered frostbite, and were forced to turn back just 100 meters from the summit. Despite the damage, Anker, now 52, spent the following three years “possessed” by the Shark’s Fin. Not even a traumatic brain injury Ozturk sustained backcountry skiing or an avalanche that almost killed Chin on the same project could stop them.

This is the inauspicious starting point for the newly released climbing film Meru, a Sundance standout that promises to be one of those rare adventure films that can attract a mainstream audience – in large part because its white-knuckle footage has a storyline to match. Directed by Chin, the film chronicles a decades’ long obsession with a peak known in Buddhist legend as the “center of the universe”, which lures Anker, Chin and Ozturk even as summiting it threatens their lives.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Meru trailer.

Returning to the mountain in 2011, says Chin, felt “like we were heading to the gallows”. As they ascend in dizzying panoramic shots, Ozturk is filmed struggling with each step. Still recovering from a severed vertebral artery sustained in his skiing accident five months prior, which cut off half the blood to his brain, Ozturk begins suffering an apparent stroke and collapses into the tent. The logical response would have been to descend. But the trio pushes forward because they need something to “hold on to”.



All three have lost friends to the mountains. Anker’s mentor, Terrance “Mugs” Stump, died on Denali (Mt McKinley, in Alaska) in 1992, leaving Anker with the unfinished business of summiting Shark’s Fin, Mugs’s longtime dream.

Far from slowing them down, the damage they endure seems to drive them forward – all three broken men, fighting the sky.

“Meru is the anti-Everest,” says mountaineer and author Jon Krakauer. “This climb has seen more attempts and more failures than any peak in the Himalaya.”

You might say the same about the film itself, which has been years and many false summits in the making.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Conrad Anker on Meru in 2011. Photograph: Jimmy Chin

When I interviewed Ozturk about the imminent release of House of Cards, as it was then called, back in 2012, he was living in Boulder, Colorado, and editing what he thought would be a 50-minute adventure film to premiere at Telluride Mountainfilm that summer. Three years and numerous festival rejections later, the film won the 2015 Audience Award for best documentary at Sundance and is in the process of a nationwide general release – uncommon treatment for a genre of film typically satisfied by 20 minutes of action sequences.

Ozturk wrote in a 2012 email: “Although standing on the summit with Jimmy and Conrad was surreal and emotional, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that sharing this film is going to end up being our ultimate resolution to all the PTSD of the experience, hopefully a work of art that does justice to our collective life’s work.”

It’s been a long time coming. Documentary film-maker and Meru co-director Chai Vasarhelyi became attached to the project in 2012, after Chin showed her a version of the initial cut. Chin says the project drew them together: the two married the following spring and now have a daughter, Marina.

With Vasarhelyi’s help, the film expanded to 90 minutes, with additional interviews from Krakauer and family members that explore the climbers’ compulsive desire to reach the summit.

All climbing films deal with testing the limits of human endurance. It’s much less common to find one that successfully explores the psychological toll the mountain takes, and the type of personality able to overcome all the physical signs that it’s time to turn back.

“We would hit these blank sections of rock, where I was sure there was nowhere else to go, but then Jimmy or Conrad would launch into the void,” says Ozturk.

Most of high-level mountain climbing isn’t glorious. Much of it is failure and – even at the best of times – a kind of abject misery you might enjoy tomorrow because it makes for a great story.

Climbing films have often hinted at that insane drive, which carries ambitious people to the brink of self-destruction. What separates Meru is its exploration of the dark side of that ambition, and the demons that go with it.

High five

Here are five other climbing films that will make your palms sweat:

Touching the Void (2003) – Kevin MacDonald

Mountaineers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates recount their notoriously disastrous 1985 climb in the Peruvian Andes, during which Yates was forced to cut the rope on Simpson. Partially held together by on-location re-creations on 21,000-foot Siula Grande, the film does justice to one of the greatest survival stories ever told.

Valley Uprising (2014) – Peter Mortimer, Nick Rosen

Tracing the history of dirtbag climbing over the past 60 years, this Sender Films documentary offers 90 minutes of legendary Yosemite rock monkeys scaling, falling and flying. “The beautiful thing about climbing to me is you can’t justify it,” says one. “It doesn’t pretend to be anything useful.”

Race 4 the Nose (2011) – Nick Rosen and Peter Mortimer

Featuring the late greats Dean Potter and Sean Leary, this 24-minute profile of the competition for the speed record on the Nose of Yosemite’s El Capitan is pure adrenaline-junkie fun.

Cliffhanger (1993) – Renny Harlin

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cliffhanger Guide to Climbing Gear



Because Sylvester Stallone and a million different physics-defying slo-mo sequences. Drink every time someone falls to their death.

Point Break (2015) – Ericson Core

The best ridiculous climbing film is the one you’re seeing next. Scheduled for release on Christmas day, this Point Break remake employed some of the biggest names in adventure sports. Keep an eye out for rock-climbing legend Chris Sharma, who plays Johnny Utah’s big-wall alter ego.