There is but a thin line between victory and defeat. For Slovak mountaineering in the Himalayas, the 80s were a golden age. In 1984 Slovaks climbed the virgin south face of Lhotse, which Reinhold Messner, after an unsuccessful attempt, called the project of the millennium. After winning international recognition, our mountaineers set their sights on an even more audacious goal. Cruel Everest documents their unfulfilled dream of climbing Mount Everest's most challenging face. The three gruelling expeditions culminated in the most tragic moments of Slovak mountaineering. In hindsight, we can try to analyse these Slovaks’ attempts to surmount the world’s highest peak and reconstruct their story. “Though mountaineering may seem to be too specific a subject, familiar only to a handful of people, it encompasses much, much more. It isn’t just about conquering mountains and boosting one’s ego. As Edmund Hillary put it, ‘It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” (Pavol Barabáš)