“Une idée de la liberté”

Twenty-nine years that the Aventure Découverte Festival of Val d’Isère has been inviting us to take the road.
Twenty-nine years that a troupe of sailors, divers, mountaineers, athletes, pilots, champions, scientists, explorers and artists have taken turns on the stage of the Henri Oreiller Congress Centre to confirm that “the value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one gains by obtaining it, but in what one pays to acquire it, in what it costs.”

This phrase from Nietzsche opens excerpt number 38 of Twilight of the Idols. The passage is entitled “My Idea of Freedom.” It seems that none of the festival’s adventurers would contradict the Nietzschean “idea”!

The filmmakers, explorers and competitors of the festival describe to us the ordeal that led them to their goal. It will be more or less difficult, often exhilarating, sometimes painful, always enlightening.

There will be joys and sorrows gathered along the way, torments and happiness, wounds and moments of illumination. Sometimes the dream is shattered. At other times, the result surpasses the expectation. It even happens that adventurers discover themselves!

What is lost along the way, the shedding that occurs (like that of a reptile), the inner alchemy, the transformation of the self: all of this is the price of adventure—what it costs.

Since a dream is never fulfilled without effort, it becomes all the more noble. In the Golden Eagle awarded by the jury at the end of the festival, one must remember this: the portion of himself that the adventurer has invested in his project.

The other lesson of the Aventure Découverte Festival is that achievement sharpens thought, strengthens sensitivity, and exalts feeling. Listen to these adventurers speaking after returning from the four corners of the world: the road inspires them! Nietzsche again (at the beginning of Ecce Homo): “The greatest agility of the muscles has always gone hand in hand with an overflow of creative force.” Clearly, we should have invited him to Val d’Isère, he—the philosopher-traveler who loved the mountains so much. But he was detained. Beyond good and the valley.

Sylvain Tesson

2027 Edition

Applications for the 2027 edition of the Festival will be open from September 1 to November 30, 2026.