The Last Expedition
Wanda Rutkiewicz disappeared over 30 years ago. The first woman in the world to climb K2 and among the first to scale Mt. Everest, Wanda entered uninvited what was then a man’s world of mountaineering. Director Eliza Kubarska, herself a climber, sets off to the Himalayas in search of Wanda, her only clue an audio-diary her quarry left behind where she makes the mysterious assertion, "I know perfectly well that there's no way back for me.” When she vanished on Kangchenjunga in 1992, did she die or did she seek refuge in a Buddhist monastery, as a letter to her mother suggested? Esteemed climbers Reinhold Messner, Krzysztof Wielicki and Carlos Carsolio, as well as the women closest to Wanda, her sister Janine Fies, and manager Marion Fiek, join Kubarska in exploring Wanda’s life and the mystery of her disappearance. Winner Best Documentary 2025 Orly Awards (Polish Film Awards equivalent to the Academy Awards®)
Director/s
Eliza Kubarska
Eliza Kubarska
ELIZA KUBARSKA Eliza is a director and artist, screenwriter, and mountain climber specializing in filmmaking under extreme conditions. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Wajda Film School in Warsaw, she collaborates with prominent broadcasters such as ARTE, ZDF, HBO, MAX, and TVP. Her works include Mountain Love Story (2010); Walking Under Water (2014), winner of the Hot Docs Jury Award; K2: Touch the Sky (2015), and The Wall of Shadows (2020).