Local talent and film producer Monika Braid is on a roll with her internationally acclaimed documentary, The Last Expedition. After a successful run at festivals abroad, the film is coming home to Hastings’ Kino-Teatr. This female-led story follows pioneering mountaineer Wanda Rutkiewicz, who rose above a world that sought to limit her and charted her own path to freedom.
Monika has been producing feature-length international documentaries for over 20 years, with some of her films earning prestigious international awards and Grand Prix honors. She made her home in St. Leonards-on-Sea ten years ago, working from her seafront office while traveling the world to bring back stories of people and places largely pushed to side of our common conscience, pointing the camera at the underprivileged, neglected, or misunderstood—whether it's the Borneo Badjao sea gypsies, free divers pushed away from their sea homes by diving industries (Walking Under Water, 2014); Sherpas whose whose beliefs in the holiness of mountains is disrespected by the Western climbers (The Wall of Shadows, 2020); or Voytek, the bear adopted by Polish soldiers during World War II who became an army corporal, only to end up behind bars in Edinburgh Zoo (Voytek: The Bear Who Went to War). Through magical narratives and often mystical imagery, Monika’s films present the dilemmas of the world in magical narratives and often almost mystical images that underline the gap between cultures but also reveal something that connects them.
Her latest film, directed by Polish filmmaker Eliza Kubarska, sheds light on the largely unknown biography of Wanda Rutkiewicz, who disappeared in the Himalayas in 1992. What happened on that final climb? Filmmaker and mountaineer Eliza Kubarska retraces Wanda’s footsteps on the world’s highest peaks, unraveling the mystery of the first woman to summit K2. Could Wanda still be alive, perhaps in a monastery in Tibet? Using previously unseen diaries, rare audio and video archives from Wanda’s Himalayan expeditions, and interviews with legendary climbers, Sherpas, Buddhist nuns, and monks, The Last Expedition delivers a gripping exploration of one woman’s emotional struggles and aspirations. The film dares to undermine the existing male order of climbing community.
The film will be shown at Kino-Teatr on March 13th at 3:00 PM and 7:30 PM, followed by a Q&A with Monika Braid.
