Ellen Vermeulen’s latest documentary, Une femme qui part, studies the remarkable Marie-Louise Chapelle, the first French woman to reach an unclimbed peak in the Himalayas in 1952. Chapelle led a double life, being a mother for six months a year and braving unclimbed mountains the other six. Seventy years later, Vermeulen repeats this difficult climb. Driven by Chapelle’s archive of diaries, letters, and footage, Vermeulen traverses the inhospitable snow landscapes with her camera that have been changed beyond recognition by time and climate. She interweaves footage she shot herself with Chapelle’s archive material and reflects on her own life questions: a life with children, or without? Une femme qui part explores the tension between personal ambitions and social inequality and exposes the limitations women are often confined by. An intimate search for meaning, in which time, memories, and choices become deeply intertwined. A film about limits, desires, and the complexity of being a woman.
