If you thought that the Oscar-winning Free Solo was a wild ride, you better take a deep breath and buckle up before you watch Everest: The Other Side.
After following rock climber Alex Honnold in Free Solo, directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin this time follow a couple of passionate adventurers who push themselves to the limits of the possible and of human endurance. They are Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, who share the dream of becoming the first to successfully climb up and ski down the north face of Everest.
As you can imagine, the idea causes concern among friends and family. Everest: The Other Side, which currently screens at the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), is “a compelling and moving portrait of perseverance,” the festival website says.
Discussing the Walt Disney Studios movie at LFF, Vasarhelyi and producer Shannon Dill (The Price of Free, He Named Me Malala) told THR about upping the stakes for their latest cinematic adventure.
“A lot of my work has looked at this fundamental human condition, where you’ve got these audacious dreams, but also the psychosis, diligence and determination or drive to do the work to get there,” shared Vasarhelyi. “Hilaree was what disarmed me. She was very candid about her drive and her obsession with these outdoor feats, but also, she didn’t romanticize it. She said: ‘It’s a mountain. It may not matter [to others], but it means everything to me.”
The two women’s kids hung out, allowing the filmmaker to see that she was a great mother. “So, I was interested in exploring that in a woman, and I thought Hilaree brought an honesty that I hadn’t seen before.”
How did Dill sign up after collaborating with the directors on Free Solo? “We begged Shannon to come back,” Vasarhelyi told THR. “She is a very sought-after producer in documentaries, and we really wanted her” back on Everest.
How did the movie compare to Dill’s past work? “The scale of this project is like none other that I’ve worked on and none other that I’ve seen in documentary form,” she shared with THR. “And I had the same experience with Hilaree. She’s ambitious and a working mom, and I was so curious to learn more about her and the fact that she was at her level. She’s at this level not just as a woman, but as a climber and as a ski mountaineer. She was at the top, and I was fascinated by that. And when you meet her, you realize that the light that she shines and she brings with her is real.”
The timing also fit. “We were just coming out of COVID, so when they called at the end of 2020 and said they were thinking of doing a film of this scale, with this landscape, going to Everest, getting out, chasing a dream, it was just a no-brainer.”
Does the hope to provide inspiration for audiences play a big role for the creative team? “It’s an idea that I’ve looked at in many films – this fundamental human paradox of having these really ambitious dreams but they require real work to get there,” said Vasarhelyi. “We had a very long and difficult journey where great tragedy also happened. So I’m happy if you come out of it feeling buoyed. I think there is a lot of hope and inspiration in the film, but I think we are also really trying to create a very candid look, an honest look at the ethical complexity of these big ambitions.”
Added Dill: “With Jim and Hilaree being middle-aged and having already been doing this for over 20 years as athletes, that was interesting as well. They’ve had a lot of complicated life that they’ve lived, a lot of loss, and so, as characters, they were really interesting. As people, they brought a lot to the table already, and the sport itself is a niche sport.”
Are more movies on or near mountain tops in the works from the director or the producer? “I think for me, this is my last mountain film,” Vasarhelyi said. But Dillon offered: “Never say never.”