No, not the parkas. Nordwand in German translates as the north face of the Eiger, a fearsome Swiss peak that in the ’30s became the object of National Socialist obsession. A 1936 Olympic gold medal was promised to its first summit party–preferably to be of good, blonde Aryan stock. The Nazis pushed the press to glorify the alpinists who tried. Though as an editor says in this dramatization of an epic pre-war attempt, “Those two don’t care about the politics,” meaning the two rustic Bavarian mountaineers who quit the Wehrmacht to make the attempt–after pedaling 700 kilometers by bicycle with their gear! Benno Furmann (see Kaifeck Murder, also at SIFF) and Florian Lukas play the impetuous pair. Embellishing the true-life story is a journalist from their home village (Johanna Wokale) to provide a love interest and tears. Northwest climbers (myself included) who know the story needn’t be warned of spoilers: The film is slow, realistic, and excruciating in its latter stages. The difference between a 50- and 60-meter rope is life and death. A lost mitten means debilitating frostbite. There are no helmets, GPS units, or cell phones to call for rescue. This isn’t Vertical Limit, but Touching the Void. (The tourist hotel down in Kleine Scheidegg and Jungfraubahn train-tunnel “gallery” widows drilled through the rock will also be familiar to many from The Eiger Sanction.) For SIFFgoers whose highest summit is Mt. Si, North Face may be an admonition not to climb any higher. Director Philipp Stolzl makes the movie a tad more political (i.e., anti-Nazi) than it needs to be, but Furmann’s stoic character reduces the story to its fundamentals. Of the risks in climbing (as in life), he says, “You can be the best, but it’s still a lottery.”North Face Admiral, 9:30 p.m. Thurs., June 11. Cinerama, 12 p.m. Sat., June 13.