Passion for Climbing

My name is Marco Zanone, I’m a rock climber and a filmmaker based in Northwest Italy. I live in Ronco Biellese, a small town close to the Alps, situated an hour from Milan/Turin.
I think the passion for climbing has always been inside of me. My father was a rock climber in the 80s, so I was constantly surrounded by the sport growing up. I spent a lot of my childhood focusing on football, but rock climbing has always been a passion of mine. Whether it was watching my father climb, or me going out in the mountains and climbing on my own, it has always been something I’ve loved to do.

At the age of 16, I started seriously rock climbing and I fell in love with it. Since the very beginning of my climbing career, I’ve been able to travel and climb in various countries (thanks to my family) like France, Spain, and Germany, which I believe has played a big role in my successful climbing and photography career.
My passion for climbing started at the same time as my passion for photography did - in fact, I believe the first time I wore a pair of climbing shoes, I also started using a camera.
In the beginning, taking a small camera with me was just a way to remember my adventures. But, then I started to realize I could make something of my photography, and I bought my first professional camera. The adventure began.
When you love doing something, you always want to become better at it, challenge yourself and face the unknown.
It’s been the same with filmmaking and photography: it started as a passion and everything I learned during the first few years was mainly due to personal experiences. At a certain point this was not enough for me anymore. I felt the urge to learn more about the subject, which marked the beginning of film school for me, in Milan of 2015.
I graduated in the beginning of July 2018, three years later and took advantage of my free time in the summer months and travelled and climbed as much as I could.

Last fall my brother and I planned a 20-day trip to Zillertal, a well-known valley situated an hour from Innsbruck (Austria). It was our first time up there, so the first few weeks were a discovery period, which allowed us to quickly realize how beautiful the valley was.
The rock-quality was insane, the panoramas left us breathless at times and the valley offered some of the best sport climbing routes I have ever climbed on.
Having my brother as a partner was simply perfect. We mostly climbed the same routes, our motivation was always pretty high and thanks to my many months of training, I was able to enjoy the valley at its finest.
During this trip I was able to climb routes up to 8c+ and I also spent a lot of time climbing on-sight on the 8a’s range. Everything turned out to be perfect and I didn’t feel bad if I left a few projects “unclimbed”.

Zillertal has become one of my favorite places in the world, I can’t wait to come back next fall and go deeper into the valley and discover more routes to climb.
In the meantime, I have my eyes on an infamous route in Céuse, France; a real struggle but I will succeed sooner or later.
My life is moving fast and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future will bring for both, climbing and filmmaking.