Forbidden Pilgrimage (Pre-production)

Director: Ellen Vermeulen

This is the story of a woman, ahead of her time, who was torn between the life she was destined for and the life she longed to live. But does anybody truly know what she was actually looking for? In 1952 Marie-Louise Chapelle makes history by becoming the first woman on a top in the Himalaya Mountains. This expedition to the top of the Chaukhamba I, however, proceeded with great difficulty. From the moment she had to say goodbye to her family until the actual journey, she was thoroughly confronted with her womanhood and the additional idea that women were supposed to stay at home. Eventually she, as woman, was denied to join the final summit attempt as if a glass ceiling kept her from her ambitions. Marie-Louise had to make her way to an alternative nearby peak, the Deodakni, which she conquered few days later with some expedition members true to her fellowship. Marie-Louise Chapelle was born in 1909 in a bourgeoisie family in the North of France. Her life seemed to be mapped out to become and remain a bourgeois woman with a husband and four children. But, in 1942, she coincidentally ends up in the Alpine mountains where she meets Eduard Frendo, a renowned and experienced mountaineer. This journey will change her life as well as the lives of her family and close friends. The filmmaker embarks on a journey through the feelings of Marie-Louise to understand the woman she was and to explore what is at stake for herself as a woman in todays society.

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