Netflix has picked up worldwide rights to the documentary “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” out of the Toronto International Film Festival, TheWrap has learned. The sale comes on the heels of another high-profile pickup from Netflix, Anna Kendrick’s serial killer directorial debut “Woman of the Hour.”
The streamer will release the film in 2024.
Directed by Lucy Walker (“Of Night & Light”), the film tells the story of Lhakpa Sherpa, the first Nepali woman to summit and descend Mount Everest who is now a single mom working at a Connecticut Whole Foods.
“Lhakpa grew up in Nepal, illiterate and rejected by her family, and emigrated to the US without speaking English,” the official synopsis from TIFF reads. “When we meet her, she’s working as a dishwasher at Whole Foods in Connecticut, raising her teenage daughters, Sunny and Shiny, in a small apartment. She’s a single mom and spousal-abuse survivor. Although she kept setting new records as a woman climber, those accomplishments didn’t improve her life economically. The film shows the gulf of experience between Lhakpa and her daughters, who were raised in the US and have not known the sort of hardship their mother experienced in Nepal.”
The film follows Sherpa as she makes one more trek to Mount Everest, despite not having time to train due to her full-time job.
“Mountain Queen” presented a work in progress screening as part of the docs program on Friday. The film was produced by Charlie Corwin, Michael D. Ratner, Miranda Sherman, Dalia Burde and Christopher Newman. Executive producers are Sidney Kimmel, Brian Kornreich, Jo Henriquez, Scott Ratner, Amani King and Lucy Walker.
SK Global Entertainment produced the documentary alongside OBB Pictures and Avocados and Coconuts.
Deadline first reported the news.
