Olivia Lichtenstein is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who had a distinguished career at BBC Television before becoming a freelance documentary and drama producer/director and journalist. Her latest work is a compelling true story of 30-year-old climber Tom Ballard who disappeared on one of the Himalayas' most deadly mountains, Nanga Parbat, in February 2019. THE LAST MOUNTAIN movie is directed by Emmy award-winner Chris Terrill, Emmy Award-winning producer Julia Nottingham and BAFTA Award winning producer Olivia Lichtenstein. It explores the forces that drove two mountaineers to their untimely deaths – a quarter of a century apart. One a mother Alison Hargreaves; the other her son British rock climber, alpinist Tom Ballard. We sat down with Olivia Lichtenstein to talk more about the movie.
Why did you choose to make the film about Alison Hargreaves and Tom Ballard? When director, Chris Terrill and I were both working at the BBC, we made a film about Alison Hargreaves in 1995 who died after summiting K2. The film, Alison’s Last Mountain, followed her husband, Jim Ballard and their two children, Tom, then 6 and Kate, 4 as they traveled to K2 base camp to say goodbye to her. Chris Terrill kept in touch with the family, intermittently filming Tom and Kate as they grew up as he planned to make a follow up film about them and their passion for the mountains. When Tom died on Nanga Parbat in 2019, this plan obviously had to change and, sadly, the film now became about what had happened to Tom. We wanted to celebrate Tom’s talent and to show something of how Tom and Kate had grown up with an intense passion for the mountains, a place where they both felt most alive.
What do you think drives the climbers to go and do something that can sacrifice their lives? Is it euphoria, adrenaline? Are they just like us? I think it’s difficult for non-mountaineers to understand quite what it is about mountains that drives people to climb them. Both Kate and Tom talk about an acute feeling of belonging in the mountains and the sense of oneness that they feel with them, standing with nature. The drive to get to the top feels like a primal need and perhaps represents the desire to be at one with the elements and understand one’s place in the world. As someone who prefers to drink a cup of coffee at the foot of a mountain and admire it from afar, I do feel that climbers are a breed apart, driven by a particular force. We non-climbers perhaps have different, metaphorical mountains to climb that satisfy our human desire to strive for something.
You've spent a lot of time with the family filming the movie. How did the family feel about making the movie? Particularly Kate Ballard in her final trip which was deeply emotional for the viewer.
Director, Chris Terrill has, over the years, almost become part of the Ballard family and this was an especially difficult film for him to make. It’s been very difficult for the family: while they were very keen for Tom to be celebrated and his life to be remembered, they’ve had to cope with their grief, which was very raw when we started making this film. For Kate, too, the trip to Nanga Parbat was a very tough journey to make emotionally; a parallel journey to the one that she made at the age of 4 to say farewell to her mother and which must necessarily have awakened the grief she felt then on top of what she was feeling now after the loss of Tom. Mountaineering and being in the mountains is so central to the Ballard family that along with their grief is the understanding that Tom died doing what he loved best - climbing. It was wonderful for Kate to be reunited with Ibrahim who had carried her on his shoulders as a child and to walk with him in the mountains once again and their reunion is one of the most profoundly moving moments in the film. He brought her great comfort on that difficult trip as did Chris, whom she has known nearly all her life.
Do you think Alison's fame in some ways pressured Tom to become more competitive and keep his mom's legacy?
It’s hard to know just what it is that drives people to do what they do. Mountain climbing was Tom’s raison d’être - his first ascent was in Alison’s womb when she was 6 months pregnant with him. I’m sure he must have had a powerful internalized sense of his mother and her achievements and a drive to achieve in his own right too. He came from powerful mountaineering stock, it was in his DNA. I’m sure, as well as keeping his mother’s flame alive, he was intent too on forging his own legacy and striving to fulfill his own extraordinary potential.
And what about Tom, was he pressured by his companion during his last climb? Was there something else that could have caused this? Could their death be avoided?
This is very difficult to assess. Tom, until then, had been a solo climber, relying on his own judgment for all his decisions. We won’t ever know what happened in those final hours and whose decision it was to make that fateful final ascent. It’s clear that Tom had thought about turning back, as Karim tells us in the film, but for whatever reason, he changed his mind.
Was this film a celebration of life and human achievements? What message were you hoping to deliver?
This is a film about passion and commitment, it’s also a film about family, love and loss. I think that’s why it’s having such an extraordinary response from viewers. Even if you’re not a mountaineer or aficionado, this is a powerful film about grief and how to climb the mountain of bereavement when you’re the ones left behind. As such, it resonates with everyone everywhere. Jim and Kate’s courage in sharing their story has touched so many and will, we hope, keep Alison and Tom in people’s hearts for many years to come.
THE LAST MOUNTAIN is a heart-breaking yet uplifting story about one of the world’s best climbing families, and their passion. Filmed over 25 years with intimate access and breathtaking archive footage, this is a must-see documentary that will tell the story of mountains and mountaineers as never before.
THE LAST MOUNTAIN is available on Digital and on Demand.
