Caitríona Balfe has never needed a reminder to fly the flag for Irish talent, and this week in Toronto she did it again. The Monaghan-born Outlander star turned up at the Toronto International Film Festival for the premiere of TENZING, a biographical drama that revisits one of the twentieth century’s great human achievements: the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953.

The film tells the story of Tenzing Norgay, played by Phuntsok, a Himalayan climber whose skill and determination have long been overshadowed in the popular telling of that expedition, which paired him with New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, played here by Hiddleston. Encouraged by his wife Dawa, played by Lhamo, Tenzing finds an unexpected ally in expedition secretary Jill Henderson, the role taken on by Balfe, and together they make the case to Colonel John Hunt, played by Dafoe, that Tenzing deserves a place on the British climbing team as an equal rather than a guide serving it from the margins. That argument sits at the heart of TENZING‘s tension, since where the Western climbers speak of “Everest” as a summit to be conquered, Tenzing holds “Chomolungma” as a sacred mother goddess, a mountain to be honoured rather than claimed.

The film traces the expedition through that clash of worldviews as much as through the physical dangers of the climb itself, weaving in the frictions of class, background and ambition that shadow the team even as they ascend together. Yet somewhere above the clouds, those distinctions of empire and rank begin to fall away, leaving two outsiders who find in each other a rare mutual trust, and leaving Tenzing, at last, at the summit of both a lifelong dream and a spiritual calling. For Balfe, whose career has carried her across continents and franchises, the trip to TIFF for TENZING was another quiet showcase of Irish talent taking its place on the world stage.