Best Bouldering Films

Nalle Hukkataival's multi-year siege of a single granite boulder in Finland, the line that became Burden of Dreams, the first V17. It shows what projecting at the limit is: the same move, the same forest, hundreds of falls, and the doubt that comes with being defined by one rock. Watch it if you want the most honest bouldering film about time. It opens the list because every film after it is, in some way, a faster version of this.

Mellow's 47-minute feature on Shawn Raboutou and Alphane in Chironico, one of the world's few V17s, with the rest of the Swiss season around it. It shows about 25 sessions over several months on a boulder that breaks into a V14 start and a V15 finish, with a subject who barely speaks. Watch it if you want to see the level above V16 without a narrator explaining it. After Lappnor's years, this is months, and the two together are the state of the art.

Katie Lamb and the craft of hard bouldering, in a Patagonia film as interested in process as in grades, which is why it works. It shows her ascent of Box Therapy, V16, on September 6, 2023, as one point in a long pattern of rehearsal and sequence work, fitted around a full-time engineering job. Watch it if you want a film about how a climber thinks. It follows Alphane because both are about V16 and V17, but this one has a person who explains herself.

The North Face's version of the same Swiss season, wider in cast: Raboutou, Matty Hong, Jimmy Webb, Daniel Woods, Felipe Camargo and Giuliano Cameroni. It shows Dreamtime, Fred Nicole's 2000 line and the first boulder proposed at V15, beside a new V17 twenty-two years later, along with Fight Club, Mystic River and Squalo Bianco. Watch it if you want the scene rather than the soloist. It sits after In Sequence as the first ensemble film on the list, and it is the best introduction to who climbs at this level.

Daniel Woods and Nina Williams through a Colorado winter, including the first ascent of Adrenaline, V16, and Woods's V15 upgrade of Freakshow after a hold broke. It shows skin management, short weather windows, and Williams on The Heist, a 30-foot V12 highball in Eldorado Canyon, over three sessions of sketchy falls. Watch it if you boulder outside in cold months and want to see the top end doing the same. After the Swiss films this is the American winter, and it is harsher.

Jimmy Webb's 2019 Rocklands season: four 8C boulders and multiple first ascents in eighteen minutes, from Mellow, with almost no narration. It shows one of the most productive American boulderers at full output on the sandstone best suited to his crimping and patience. Watch it if you know Rocklands and want its top end. It is the first of the season films on the list, and the purest, because it is nothing but sends.

Kyra Condie's fourth Rocklands trip, shot by Carlos Mason, built around finding one project worth committing a month to, and honest that she leaves with more projects than sends. It shows Basic Instinct, The Beaten Path, L'Arch and Distance alongside braais, board games and a deep water solo session in Cape Town. Watch it if you want to know what a full season actually feels like. A Good Season is the highlight reel of the same valley; this is the diary, and I trust it more.

Adam Ondra flashes three 8C boulders in Switzerland inside a fortnight, including Emotional Landscapes, the 2002 Klem Loskot line he calls his proudest flash. It shows one honest attempt at each problem, the near misses, and Ondra arguing on camera about what counts as touching holds before you pull on. Watch it if you care about flash ethics or just want to see what one attempt at 8C looks like. After Condie's month of not deciding, this is the opposite: three decisions, three days.

A snowstorm pushes the Mellow crew down the valley to Cresciano, where Giuliano Cameroni and friends work new lines in the Ticino boulder field that has produced classics since the nineties. It shows the cleaning, the brushing and the false starts of development rather than a send reel. Watch it if you like finding lines more than ticking them. It follows Ondra's flashes as a film about the other end of the process: making the problems in the first place.

Gritstone across the Peak District, Northumberland and Yorkshire, and a British answer to the Swiss and South African season films. It shows Sam Carling, Leo Skinner, Solly Kemball-Dorey and Finn Parry on The Boss, Careless Torque, Renegade Master, The Joker and Zoo York, and ends on Crescent Arête, a 5+ slab. Watch it if you have never seen grit and want to understand why people drive across England for it. After Cresciano's granite this is a different rock and a different pace, and the friendships carry it.

Hukkataival at roughly 14,500 feet in northern Argentina, on a valley of boulders that almost nobody climbs on. It shows first ascents beside repeats of the valley's few established lines, and enormous clean stone with nobody around. Watch it if you want to be reminded how much rock is still untouched. It is the travel film on the list, and after the Peak District's crowded classics it is a useful reset.

The ANTIGRAV crew in the Colorado alpine with Katie Lamb, Keenan Takahashi and friends, loose, funny, and full of good climbing on The Automator, Nuthin' but Sunshine and Ode to the Modern Man. It shows six strong climbers solving the same rock differently, with the camera close enough to read beta. Watch it if you want a session film that lets you settle in. It follows Tuzgle as the other high-altitude film here, but this one is about the group rather than the place.

Fifteen minutes of Jorg Verhoeven and Katha Saurwein in Rocklands from Louder Than Eleven, and a good first look at the area. It shows a spread from Creaking Heights at V4 to Golden Shadow at V14, with Ray of Light, El Corazon and Mooiste Meisie between. Watch it before A Good Season or A Month In Rocklands if you do not know the valley yet. It sits late in the list because it is a catalogue, and catalogues are best once you know what you are looking at.

Outdoor bouldering across Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, and the people who look for rock where there is very little of it. It shows the finding, cleaning and documenting of small, dispersed boulder fields, and why that work matters for a scene that is still forming. Watch it if you have ever lived somewhere without cliffs. After Rocklands it is the humblest film on the list, and the one that most of the world's climbing actually resembles.

1999: an eighteen-year-old Chris Sharma in an RV with Obe Carrion, establishing hundreds of problems at areas that were only then being discovered. It shows a road trip, crashpads in desert light, and the strongest climber in the sport treating the whole West as an open project list. Watch it if you want to see where American bouldering started, and the first film Josh and Brett Lowell made. The list ends with the two historical films, and this is the origin.

Michael Call's 2005 Hueco Tanks film with Sharma, Boone Speed, Jason Kehl and the rest of that era's cast, with a Fugazi track doing a lot of structural work. It shows Sharma returning to Hueco seven years after Rampage, now the standard everyone measures against, and a crew that clearly likes each other. Watch it if you want mid-2000s bouldering with the polish left off. It closes the list because it answers Rampage: same climber, six years on, the scene he started already grown up.