La Dura Complete: The Hardest Rock Climb in the World

One of the best stories Reel Rock ever told, and it understands that it is a handover. In 2013 at Oliana, Chris Sharma invites a Czech teenager named Adam Ondra to try his project, La Dura Dura, and the two work the same 9b+ through a friendly rivalry. Ondra sends first, on February 7. Sharma follows on March 23. It became the first route where two independent climbers agreed on 9b+.

This is for anyone who wants to see the moment the sport's center of gravity moved from one person to another, and for climbers who care about the route: 50 meters of Oliana limestone with most of the difficulty in the first ten, a boulder sequence steep enough to rate 9b on its own. Skip it if you want a pure climbing document. Eighteen minutes is built as a story, and the interviews carry as much as the footage.

What works is Sharma watching Ondra top out his own project. The film gives that moment the space it deserves and does not frame it as defeat. The Oliana footage is gorgeous and the interviews are generous. What it gets wrong is the aftermath. As of this writing the route has been climbed only twice, and the film could not know that, but it dates the sense that the grade race would keep going.

Silence is the next chapter, Ondra alone at Flatanger four years later. Watch La Dura first. It is the last film where he had a teacher in the frame.