Lost on a Mountain in Maine

On 17 July 1939 a twelve year old boy named Donn Fendler lost his family near the summit of Mount Katahdin, in Maine, with a storm coming in. What followed, nine days alone in the woods and a search that made front pages across the country, he wrote up himself in a book put together with Joseph B. Egan. 'Lost on a Mountain in Maine' adapts that account, Andrew Kightlinger directs and Sylvester Stallone produces through his own company, Balboa Productions.

The hike begins as a family outing: Donn climbs with his father, his twin brother Ryan and a guide. The weather turns on them before they reach the top, the boy pushes ahead and ends up loose on the mountain before anyone notices. Once they realise he's missing, hundreds of volunteers spread out across Baxter State Park, and a summer walk becomes a search against the clock.

From there 'Lost on a Mountain in Maine' works on two fronts. Up on the mountain Donn is left without a coat and nearly without shoes, his head growing foggier with hunger and exhaustion, holding on to what the Boy Scouts taught him: keep your nerve, follow a stream, don't stop walking. Down below his parents, Ruth and Donald, carry the waiting in their own separate ways, caught between guilt and word that never comes.

It was shot in the summer of 2022, split between Ulster County in New York state and Baxter State Park itself, with sequences filmed on Katahdin. Idan Menin shot it and Garth Stevenson wrote the score. One choice stands out: the story keeps breaking off for archive interviews with the real searchers and relatives, and that's where most of the reviews took issue.

Luke David Blumm leads as Donn, with Paul Sparks and Caitlin FitzGerald as his parents and Ethan Slater as the guide. It premiered at the Maine International Film Festival in July 2024, reached American cinemas that November and took around 1.2 million dollars. British viewers can find it on Prime Video. As for the real Fendler, Roosevelt handed him a medal and he went on telling the story for nearly seventy years, until his death in 2016.

• Adventure
• Drama
• Family