Arc'teryx Presents: Andrea

A climbing film mostly about everything around climbing, and the better for it. Nina Caprez and photographer Jeremy Bernard become parents at the height of their careers and ask what actually pushes a person further. Their answer is Andrea, a non-profit built on the idea that climbing is worth more when it is shared, and the film follows the family through Morocco trying to bring the sport to communities that have never had it.

This is for anyone who has wondered what happens to a professional climber after the sends stop being the point. It is also a good film for non-climbers, because the questions are about care and improvisation, not grades. Skip it if you want Caprez on rock. There is some, but the forty-two minutes belong to the project.

What works is that the trip they planned is not the trip they get. A heart defect diagnosed in their daughter, then an earthquake through the region they were traveling to, force the film to become something else, and Arc'teryx lets it. What it gets wrong is that the non-profit's actual work stays vague. I finished the film unsure what Andrea did on the ground.

ORBAYU is Caprez a decade earlier, on a 500-meter 8c face in the Picos de Europa with Cédric Lachat. That film is about doubt on a wall. This one is about doubt everywhere else, and it is the more grown-up film.