Broad Peak 2022

In March 1988, a Polish climbing team in the Karakoram faces a bold, perilous decision. Two climbers, Maciej Berbeka, Ireneusz Czop Berbeka, and Aleksander Lwow, Piotr Głowacki Lwow, plan to attempt the first winter ascent and the first alpine-style ascent of Broad Peak, a neighboring giant to K2, despite stern protests from their leader, Andrzej Zawada Tomasz Sapryk Zawada. They depart from their Baltoro base camp as a ruthless blizzard closes in, and Zawada makes a cautious call: retreat if the storm doesn’t ease. The storm rages on, and when the next day arrives, Lwow urges turning back as weather worsens, but Berbeka’s resolve hardens. He sets off alone, pressing upward into the death zone, where the air is dangerously thin and every step weighs heavily on the body. The team radios him, but his message comes back as a solitary, breathless confirmation that he has reached the summit, and then silence—followed by a grueling descent that tests every fiber of his endurance. He finally returns to base camp and is airlifted for medical care. In Poland, his name becomes a symbol of courage and national pride, but the glow of acclaim is tempered by traumatic flashbacks that haunt him long after the ascent.

Three months later, Berbeka’s world is shaken when he reads an article by Lwow. The piece reveals a crucial truth: Lwow had not actually stood atop Broad Peak—the summit remained elusive, and he had reached only the Rocky Summit, a slim margin from the true peak. Enraged and feeling betrayed, Berbeka confronts Zawada, who admits that the entire team had wanted his safe return and knew that if Berbeka had known the truth, he might have continued the ascent. The revelation explodes across the Polish mountaineering scene, and Berbeka withdraws from the climbing community, carrying the weight of what he perceives as a compromised achievement and the personal cost of the expedition.

Jump forward 24 years to June 2012, when Krzysztof Wielicki [Łukasz Simlat] Wielicki tracks Berbeka down with a new proposition: return to Broad Peak and finally conquer the mountain, granting Berbeka a long-sought vindication. Initially reluctant, Berbeka agrees after Wielicki emphasizes that he deserves to complete the journey he began so many years earlier. The team assembled for this challenge includes Berbeka, Adam Bielecki Bielecki, Tomasz Kowalski Kowalski, and Artur Małek Małek, alongside Wielicki himself. They travel to the Karakoram with a sense of urgency and a careful plan to push the ascent in winter conditions. As the days shorten and the clock runs against them, Wielicki warns that they are behind schedule and that daylight will not permit a long finish. Nevertheless, the team presses on, drawn by a mix of ambition, resolve, and the stubborn belief that history can be rewritten on the mountain.

Against the odds, on 5 March 2013, Berbeka and his three companions reach the summit of Broad Peak, completing the world’s first winter ascent of the mountain. Their climb is a testament to endurance, teamwork, and the iron will to conquer a peak that had resisted winter attempts for decades. Yet the triumph is tempered by the stark reality of their descent: before the credits roll, the film reveals that Berbeka and Kowalski did not survive the descent, their bodies succumbing to the brutal, unforgiving nature of the Karakoram. The message lingers—glory earned at such a cost carries a weight that only those who risk everything can truly understand.