Salewa, Evolution Movie with Anna Stöhr
On April 14 at 2 pm on the website of the South Tyrolean mountain clothing and equipment brand, Evolution movie, the new film by Anna Stöhr, will be launched.
After leaving competition in 2018, Austrian climber Anna Stöhr was looking for new challenges. She certainly found one in Aiglun, in the French Maritime Alps, where the 31-year-old faced and completed Ali Baba (8 pitches, 250 meters, grade 8a+). The film Evolution recounts the personal journey that brought a two-time bouldering world champion from one extreme to the other of climbing, leaving the artificial competitions to embrace the freedom, the necessary determination and the rhythms characteristic of the great alpine climbing walls.
To test one’s limits, both physical and mental, is something Anna Stöhr has come to terms with since she was a young girl. But the transformation of this climber begins in the summer of 2018 and is something completely new for her too: after fifteen years of bouldering competition, where she has reached the top of the international scene, dominating competitions with two world titles, four world cups, two European titles, and countless podiums, also due to a back injury, Anna announces her retirement.
During the film the athlete Salewa remembers an episode from a few years ago, during a climbing trip in Sardinia. At that time she was beginning to meditate on her evolution as a climber and had faced the challenges of long routes: “I was impressed by those walls and wanted to find out if I could climb them. I had confidence in my athletic skills, but I also had great respect for the height and exposure of these gigantic rock faces. My mental abilities, which I was so good at using during competitions, seemed useless while swinging 100 meters above the ground…”. At that moment I set myself the goal of becoming a more versatile climber.”
Together with her partner, professional climber Kilian Fischhuber, she dedicated herself to this challenge by looking for new projects outside of climbing gyms. Taking on a demanding route like Ali Baba, and finally completing it, represents a turning point in Anna’s life. She was facing a new terrain in every aspect, from short and intense bouldering problems to long vertical alpine climbing routes. Was she able to overcome the challenge with herself, as well as with the wall? The film Evolution shows in an exciting way how Anna Stöhr, a world-class climber, left her comfort zone to face her fears in a different dimension of climbing.