Are the walls in your house lined with photos and paintings of stunning peaks? Are your social media channels teasing you with mountain landscapes? If you’re struggling for mountain inspiration during the lockdown, check out some of our favourite free mountain films to keep your inspiration levels up. Happy watching!

Mountain

A unique cinematic and musical collaboration between the Australian Chamber Orchestra and BAFTA-nominated director Jennifer Peedom, Mountain is a dazzling exploration of our obsession with mountains. Only three centuries ago, climbing a mountain would have been considered close to lunacy. The idea scarcely existed that wild landscapes might hold any sort of attraction. Peaks were places of peril, not beauty. Why, then, are we now drawn to mountains in our millions? Mountain shows us the spellbinding force of high places - and their ongoing power to shape our lives and our dreams.

Annapurna III – unclimbed

This award-winning 12-min documentary features the 2016 expedition to the Himalayas of Nepal led by David Lama together with Austrian alpinists Hansjörg Auer and Alex Blümel. Join the team in their feelings of fatigue, anxiety, exposure and ordeal during their 5 weeks attempting one of the world’s greatest, unsolved puzzles of alpinism: The unclimbed south-east ridge of Annapurna III.

Climbing Damavand

A ski-mountaineering team from the UK attempt to climb Iran's highest mountain, Damavand (5,670 m). The team is led by Shirin Shabestari, a female Iranian athlete now living in the UK. The film provides a glimpse into Persian culture and examines the pivotal role mountaineering played in Shirin's upbringing, and as the team ascend the mountain, we discover just what this summit means to her.

Cold

Prior to 2011, 16 expeditions have tried and failed to climb one of Pakistan's 8,000 metre peaks in winter. On February 2, 2011, Simone Moro, Denis Urubko and Cory Richards became the first. Cory became the first American to summit any 8,000 metre peak in winter. The journey nearly killed them. Cory carried a small camera and filmed the ordeal constantly. This is their story, as seen from the raw, honest perspective of Cory's lens. The film explores the interwoven roles of pain, mortality, doubt and community through the lens of Cory's experience, ultimately asking a broad audience to look at their own lives in new ways.

Conquest of Everest

What drove the men who risked and lost their lives to conquer the world’s highest mountain for Britain? Fifty years on, Penny Mallory, whose ancestor, George Leigh Mallory lost his life on the mountain, tells the story of this extraordinary adventure, undertaken with primitive equipment in often terrifying weather conditions against an unstable, brooding and lethal adversary - Mount Everest. With authentic footage of the ascent, we revisit this unique adventure alongside the men who risked their lives for the privilege of being the first to say that they had stood on the roof of the world.

The Bothy Project

Four artists head to a remote Scottish bothy in an evocative call to the wilderness. During their self-enforced isolation, filmmaker Jen Randall follows a wild-swimming-video-artist, an acclaimed artist and a poet as they explore the surrounding wilderness. This is a stunning, gorgeous film that will inspire you to head to the most remote mountains in the UK and find your own adventure.

If you’re looking for a proper remote, exotic cultural adventure, check out Bruce Parry's first ever film, Cannibals & Crampons

Cannibals & Crampons

In 2001, two British ex-army officers set out to climb the unscaled face of Puncak Mandala – a remote mountain rising almost 5,000m above the jungles of New Guinea. This is the extraordinary story of their trek through some of the world's most unexplored terrain. In the course of their 150-mile journey by dugout canoe and on foot through the largest swamp on Earth, Mark Anstice and Bruce Parry dodge police, encounter disgruntled ex-head-hunters, and are pursued by a previously undiscovered clan of the Korowai tribe. That is before they have even begun their arduous journey into the mountainous interior of the island to the unclimbed south face of the mountain. Mark Anstice tells the story of an expedition far tougher than either had imagined: one that would test the explorers, their friendship and their equipment to the limits. This epic adventure won a number of international film festival awards, including at Banff and Kendal.

And if that’s whetted your appetite for mountain adventures in New Guinea, check out my own film from my 2011 ascent of Carstensz Pyramid (4,844m) – the highest peak in Australasia.

Are you inspired to climb Carstensz? You can join our next expedition here.

Take me to Carstensz Pyramid!