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HURT is a Film About Free-Soloing and Mental Health

This must-watch fictional short follows a veteran who free-solos as an escape when PTSD and heartbreak have an affect on his mental health

HURT is an award-winning film about a fictional character who uses free-soloing as a coping mechanism. It was written and directed by Vince Lapointe, a Squamish climber and helicopter rescue swimmer who struggles with PTSD. “Having known multiple climbers who’ve died soloing in my community,” said Lapointe, “I drew on my past to bring this vision to light in the hopes of preventing more deaths like those we’ve lost.” Watch the film below.

Lapointe said that he made this film following a hard separation combined with military traumas that he experienced. “This evolved into a cycle of self-hatred where I didn’t want to commit suicide, but I also didn’t want to be here anymore,” he said. “I didn’t want to deal with the pain; a pain which seemed to go away when the stakes got higher soloing; when in actuality the stakes should never feel raised soloing.”

Lapointe said that pushing his limits eventually led to being stuck five pitches up a climb in a position where he didn’t want to down-climb nor did he feel comfortable doing the next move up. “I felt the pump building; frozen on the crimps I was desperately gripping,” he said. “I recall looking down and imagining, as though reality, my body bouncing down the cliff into the talus field below. For the first time I thought ‘wow, this is not worth it.'”

Following that climb, Lapointe noticed how prevalent free-soloing was in Squamish. “I started talking with members of the climbing community about the motivations behind certain peoples’ choice to free solo and occasionally, their less talked about/less glamourous motivations,” he said. “I learned that it wasn’t uncommon for individuals in pain to look to this outlet to separate themselves from whatever traumas they were dealing with (breakups, loss of a significant others, anxiety, depression, etc).”

HURT

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