India, Oct. 23 -- Who is remembered when a mountain peak is summited, and whose forgotten labour makes it possible? Is conquest the only relationship between a person and nature? Can a story of personal endurance and collective effort teach us something about our politically fraught and ecologically precarious times?

The film Tenzing, released on Apple TV on October 16, addresses these questions through a not-quite-biographical account of Tenzing Norgay (1914-86), who became the first person to reach the summit of the world's highest peak in 1953, along with Edmund Hillary (1919-2008).

Many in Tenzing's team regard Everest as a "British mountain"- it was named after George Everest, a former Surveyor General of India - and view its conqu...