In the documentary The Oldest Munro Bagger, Scottish mountain climber Nick Gardner talks about being inspired as a little boy by looking at photos of the Matterhorn from his parents' trip to Switzerland.
On July 27th, his film will screen at the foot of that very same mountain as part of the 2026 edition of Italy's Cervino Cinemountain festival. "What a full circle moment to have his story shown there!" exclaimed Jay Golian, who co-directed the film with his wife Christina.
It gets better. Because the film won Best International Feature Documentary last month at the Katmandu Film Festival, where it made its international premiere, it is also in contention for the Italian festival's Grand Prix Des Festivals. For this prize, the Cinemountain event, which unfolds at some 6,500 feet above sea level, groups together six nominees that have won Best Film at International Alliance of Mountain Film sanctioned events. It has been dubbed by the festival as the "Oscars of mountain films."
In 2020, after Gardner's wife was diagnosed with dementia, he set out at age 80 to climb all 282 Scottish Munro peaks (hills over 3,000 feet high) to raise funds for Alzheimer Scotland and the Royal Osteoporosis Society. He completed his goal in 2022, while the documentary as a whole was filmed over a span of four years.
The Oldest Munro Bagger is the Golians' first film. Before recently relocating to Edinburgh, where Christina is from, the pair were wedding photographers based in British Columbia. (In fact, they originally met in 2005 on the slopes of another mountain, Whistler.) After the pandemic canceled their photography bookings, they set out to find a new project and wound up on the doorstep of Gardner.
The appeal of the film is universal. At the recent Sheffield Adventure Film Festival in the U.K., it registered the highest audience rating of any entry shown with a 9.7.
Sadly, Gardner's wife Janet passed away in December 2022, just a few months after he completed the Munros challenge in August. At the end of the following year, Gardner was given an MBE (Member of the British Empire) as part of King Charles' New Year's Honors.
Coincidentally, Quinn Young, a 10-year-old Scottish girl, also completed the Munros challenge just a few months after Gardner and did it again (!) in 2025.
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