''Ok, everyone. We've got a window.''
And with those words, uttered in an eerie calm, 12 hours' climb short of the summit of Mt Everest, mountaineer Rob Hall led his clients, Sherpas and fellow guides off into the darkness of their final day.
There is no happy ending to Everest , the movie which is based on the true story of events in May 1996 when eight climbers died in a storm on their way back from the summit.
Mr Hall, founder of Wanaka-based Adventure Consultants, was one of them.
Although friends and family of the mountain guiding company saw the movie in Christchurch last month, the first public airing in New Zealand was in front of an audience of about 80, at the Paradiso Cinema, in Wanaka, on Thursday night.
Mr Hall, as the movie showed, spent extra time helping a client to the summit and was caught by a storm that hit the mountain like a freight train.
One also lashed the cinema on Thursday.
Visually, the star of this movie is Everest itself.
Although the use of 3-D technology does little to enhance some of the early scenes involving groups of people, it does help convey to cinema audiences the magnificence of the mountain.
How authentic the movie is can only be guessed at by someone who has not climbed Everest in a violent storm, but Adventure Consultants chief executive Guy Cotter, who played a part in events in 1996, was an adviser on the film.
Australian Jason Clark plays Mr Hall as a straightforward Kiwi nice-guy trying to do the best by his clients, and although there are not many New Zealanders in the cast, there is a definite understated New Zealand style to the dialogue.
More than a third of the audience had been to Everest base-camp, or beyond.
Proceeds from the screening have been earmarked to assist Nepalese Sherpas.
