Skip to main content
Life is Climbing! film image; two men lean against camper van in desert

ACCESSfest: Life Is Climbing!

Free Event

This event has passed

Ready for a reminder of how incredible human beings can be? Born in Tokyo in 1968, Koba started climbing at the age of 16. At 28, he was diagnosed with an intractable eye disease called “pigmentary retinal degeneration” and slowly, inexorably, went totally blind. But this hasn’t stopped him from climbing. In 2006 he recorded his first victory in the International Paraclimbing Competition (Men Blind category), with his friend Naoya guiding him, shouting out instructions from the ground. Since then, he’s earned numerous world titles, including four consecutive gold medals in the IFSC Paraclimbing World Championships in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2019. But Naoya has a dream: he wants to bring Koba out to Indian Creek, Utah, one of the most iconic climbing challenges in the world, and talk him up a twisty, spiral sandstone outcrop poised atop a precipitous cliff face…

An exhilarating, sometimes heartbreaking film about friendship, the gifts of adversity, and the courage it takes to put everything on the line for the thing you love, Life is Climbing! culminates in a breathtaking sequence you won’t soon forget.

Director

Sokichi Nakahara

Cast

Koichiro Kobayashi, Naoya Suzuki

Credits
Country of Origin

Japan

Year

2023

Language

In Japanese with English subtitles

19+
89 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Cinematography

Sokichi Nakahara, Masataka Kiyono

Original Music

Chihei Hatakeyama

Also Playing

Georgia O'Keeffe: the Brightness of Light
Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light film image; painted reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows that combine to look like a flower

Georgia O'Keeffe: the Brightness of Light

Dir. Paul Wagner
118 min

Drawing on her copious correspondence and the world's leading scholars, this is a definitive documentary on the life and work of "the mother of American Modernism."

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Shall We Dance?

Dir. Masayuki Suô
137 min

Masayuki Suô's delightful and charming 1996 film was a box office smash and won 14 Japanese Academy Awards including Best Film. It's the story of a married salaryman who falls in love with... dance.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
Drop Dead City
Drop Dead City film image; someone holding a newspaper up in front of a brick wall

Drop Dead City

Dir. Michael Rohatyn & Peter Yost
108 min

New York, 1975. The city is minutes away from bankruptcy and President Gerald Ford wants no part of it. Sanitation workers are on strike and cops are telling tourists it's not safe to visit. The town is going up in flames and they can't pay the firemen.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Inedia

Dir. Liz Cairns
107 min

Liz Cairns makes a mesmerizing feature debut that sees a young woman suffering from mysterious food allergies join a remote island community practicing alternative healing methods. She soon realizes that not everything is as it seems.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre