Arc'teryx Presents: Baffin

Sixteen minutes that work as both an expedition record and a portrait of a partnership, which is more than most feature films manage. In August 2016 Marc-Andre Leclerc and Brette Harrington travel to Great Sail Peak on Baffin Island and make two first ascents on its walls. James Kim directs, Joshua Lavigne shoots, and the film now closes with a dedication to Leclerc, who died in 2018.

This is for anyone who knows Leclerc from The Alpinist and wants to see him at work with a partner rather than alone. It is also for people who want the Arctic setting done properly: granite rising straight out of empty country, ice, and nobody for hundreds of miles. Skip it if you want route detail. The two first ascents are the point and the film gives them names and little else.

What works is the pairing. Harrington and Leclerc read as equals on the wall, and the film shows them dividing the work rather than casting one as support. Lavigne's cinematography does the rest. What it gets wrong is brevity. Sixteen minutes for two first ascents in the Arctic leaves whole days unaccounted for.

The North Face Presents: Earthside is Brette Harrington back on Baffin six years later, in a film that also became a memorial. Watch Baffin first. It is the lighter film, and it has the two of them together.