French YouTuber hits peak with Everest documentary

admin admin | 09-17 00:15

The pitch is a classic: a young celebrity with no climbing experience and minimal training somehow scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some (if not all) odds.

French YouTuber Inès Benazzouz, known everywhere as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge.

The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release in France at the weekend.

Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris and it was seen more than 11 million times in its first 24 hours on YouTube.

The platform said that it was "undoubtedly one of the biggest launches in the history" of YouTube in France, although a spokesperson contacted by AFP could not give a precise ranking.

The 22-year-old content creator started posting video game footage in his mid-teens and his livewire energy has since catapulted him to superstardom among young French.

He has more than eight million subscribers on YouTube and more than 10 million followers on other platforms.

"I've always liked to have adventures - when I was younger, they were on video games," he told AFP in an interview before the release.

Inoxtag - "I don't want everyone to focus too much on whether I succeeded or failed. I want people see a little bit of the journey I made to get there" Photos: AFP/Getty

After obsessing over Minecraft and Fortnite for years, he said he wanted these experiences to be real.

Inoxtag posts relentlessly upbeat content and challenge videos like 30 seconds to save a life or Five days to walk across Corsica but also professes a serious concern for the environment.

His film has the moments of tension and personal drama online documentaries are expected to serve up, while mixing in serious issues like over-tourism and pollution.

Fans have been in raptures over the movie, but the French press has not exactly embraced it.

The Libération newspaper accused the filmmakers of erasing the work of the Sherpas, the Nepalese who help climbers with their ascents - although some later joined Inoxtag on stage in Paris.

Mountaineer and photographer Pascal Tournaire told L'Équipe newspaper that the movie was "very egotistical" and said that the YouTube star had not achieved any real feat.

On the other side of the ledger, Mathis Dumas, the climber who helped Inoxtag prepare for the ascent, told local media that the young star had a "real love" for the mountain.

And the fans gathered outside the cinema in Paris would not hear a word of criticism.

"I know there are plenty of people who climb the mountain and don't film themselves," said 19-year-old student Lucie Bonin.

"But it's wild that a YouTuber is entertaining us like this, just by setting himself such crazy goals."

If the pitch for Kaizen sounds like it comes from a movie, that's probably because it does - at least partially.

Inoxtag's fans at a preview of Kaizen in Paris last Friday

Inoxtag said that he was inspired by 2017 French comedy film The Climb, based on a true story where a young man from the Paris suburbs sets out to conquer Everest to impress his prospective girlfriend.

The online star is aware that his motivations come as much from fantasy as they do from concerns over real-world issues.

He told AFP that one of his great inspirations was the legendary Japanese comic creator Eiichiro Oda whose One Piece series is the biggest-selling manga in history.

"If he comes across my documentary, I'd just like to say thank you for making me believe that dreams can come true," he said of Oda.

The social media star bade an ostentatious farewell to his fans at the beginning of April, swearing off all social media for the duration of his ascent.

Warning: spoiler alert!

With his absence came tension and speculation - would he make it to the summit after all?

It is probably not too much of a spoiler to reveal that he did get to the summit.

And he was keen to play down the pre-release tension, telling AFP: "I don't want everyone to focus too much on whether I succeeded or failed.

"I want people to see a little bit of the journey I made to get there."

Source: AFP

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