On day zero, in the Golubinjak forest park, the festival opens with the guest of honour, the famous alpinist, travel writer and film director Stipe Božić.

A Q&A with the audience was followed up by a screening of the documentary feature Dhaulagiri Express, one of over 120 films in Stipe Božić’s filmmaking catalogue.

“Some people are simply magnets”, said Igor Mirković, Cinehill’s Director. He was proved right, as cars poured in to entrance of the Golubinjak forest park. As seats filled up, the remaining visitors gathered to see and hear the famous alpinist, while fallen tree trunks, forest rocks and heaps of leaves served as chairs for the curious onlookers.

“This is nothing, we used to climb up here when we were kids, only we didn’t have any safety ropes”, joked the audience from Delnice, quietly commenting on the eye-catching performance that kicked off the program. From the cliff near the stage, members of the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service Delnice simulated the descent of an injured climber. Distorted voices from walkie-talkies, dexterous climbers tens of metres up high, and stretchers suspended on swinging ropes gave the impression of rescuers in heart-stopping action. Only it wasn’t film, these heroes are very real. The Croatian Mountain Rescue Service was created in the area of Gorski Kotar, out of the local mountain experts’ desire to help those who find themselves in danger in the mountains.

“You become gentler, so to speak, in everyday life, when you go through such experiences.” – mentioned Stipe Božić, explaining what makes him make such sacrifices. “It is not easy to explain this to people who do not share, or at least not to that extent, the passion for alpinism”, remarked Igor Mirković, hosting the event. Stipe also recalled how his Mom would scold him and his Dad hid his climbing boots when he ascended the peaks as a young man. Of course, that didn’t stop Stipe Božić. When he earned his first money as a deckhand, as soon as he got off the ship, he recounts, he walked into a “mountaineering equipment boutique”. That’s when his serious mountaineering days began.

“In the villages around Mount Everest, we couldn’t buy any extra potatoes”, said Stipe Božić recounting just some of the obstacles in preparing such an expedition. He mentioned how different it was from today’s upsides of commercial mountaineering. When he was 27 years old, he became the 85th person to reach the top of the world. He also recalled how incident in which he saved a local man’s life. After surviving a bear attack, he stitched up his head, and the man gave him two eggs as a sign of thanks. “You can’t even imagine what a big thing it was back then.”

Stipe Božić also talked about skiing in sand dunes, the salty sea of the North Pole and its freshwater glaciers and the point of the globe where it is zero hours and everywhere is south. Luckily for us, this charismatic, creative and enthusiastic person has poured his countless lived experiences onto film.

On Thursday, 25 July, Cinehill is screening his films Reticent Wall and Taklamakan at 15:30 at the Circus Fellini cinema on Petehovac, while Stipe Božić will once again be present for the screening.