With more than 17 million views on YouTube in 48 hours, 340,000 spectators during a single screening at the cinema and a planned broadcast on the TF1 channel, the documentary by French YouTuber, Inoxtag, on his ascent of Everest is enjoying unusual success.
Posted online early Saturday afternoon on the platform owned by Google, where it is number one in trends, this film of nearly 2 hours 30 minutes entitled Kaizen (a Japanese term that one of its meanings is “change for the better”) has generated over 100,000 comments, often rave reviews, and garnered over 1.5 million likes.
“Very exceptional figures,” according to a YouTube spokesperson, interviewed by AFP on Sunday, for whom it is “one of the best launches in the history” of the platform in France, even if it is far from those of American stars like MrBeast who can quickly accumulate several tens of millions of views.
As proof that the documentary is reaching a wider audience than the Internet sphere, private media group TF1 announced on Monday that Kaizen would be available on its TF1+ platform from September 28, before being broadcast on the TF1 channel on October 8.
Real name Inès Benazzouz, the 22-year-old YouTuber with 20 million subscribers on social networks knew neither the techniques nor the codes of mountaineering before embarking on his challenge, undergoing intensive training with a guide, Mathis Dumas.
The story of his year of preparation and his rise was also a hit in theaters, bringing together some 340,000 spectators, including 40,000 abroad (Belgium, Quebec, Morocco, etc.) at the previews on Friday evening and Saturday morning.
For content that was put online for free a few hours later, “it’s unheard of,” Nathanaël Karmitz, one of the directors of the French distributor MK2, commented to AFP, praising “the desire for the collective experience” and a film that “deserves to be seen on the big screen.”
Inoxtag is one of the content creators affiliated with the Webedia group, producer of the documentary.
If it shows the damage of overtourism, pollution, as well as the risks linked to this expedition, Kaizen has attracted some criticism
On X, journalist Vincent Manilève was “surprised” to see “no legal mention of advertising” on YouTube, “especially when you see how omnipresent product placements are” in the documentary. This has since been added.