Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin know a thing or two about extreme athletes. From the daring rock climbing of “Free Solo” to their new film “Everest: The Other Side,” which follows Jim Morrison’s attempts to fulfill his late wife Hilaree Nelson’s dream of skiing down the world’s tallest mountain, the documentarians love to capture fearless people drawn to extreme challenges.
During a conversation about “Everest” with IndieWire features writer Alison Foreman at our Art of the Doc event in Los Angeles, the filmmakers discussed what draws them to the subject matter over and over again.
“In all our films, you think you’re seeing these exceptional, extraordinary, extreme athletes. But at the end of the day they’re still human beings like the rest of us,” Chin said. “What I’m interested in bridging that gap where people feel like they can’t relate to people out there doing these things. But the story is really human, and this film is about very human experiences. Even though they’re climbing and skiiing the most extreme places in the world.”
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Vasarhelyi also emphasized the fact that each documentary subject is a different person with their own unique story to tell. In the case of Nelson, she saw someone who was deeply goal-oriented but lacked the grand romanticizations about her sport that drive so many other athletes. She saw the adventurer as a fellow parent who lived a fairly normal life when she wasn’t pushing herself to scale the world’s highest peaks.
“I had met a lot of extreme athletes, but Hilaree had a candor to her vocation that I hadn’t heard before,” Vasarhelyi said. “It’s not romantic. She says in the film, ‘I know it’s just a mountain, but it’s everything to me. And I’m like a dog with a bone.’ And I understand that.”
National Geographic will release “Everest: The Other Side” in theaters on Friday, October 30. Watch the complete conversation in the video above.
National Geographic Documentary Films, part of a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and the National Geographic Society, is committed to bringing the world premium, feature documentaries that cover timely, provocative and globally relevant stories from the very best documentary filmmakers. Its award-winning and critically acclaimed films reach 300 million people worldwide in 180 countries and 33 languages across the global National Geographic channels and direct-to-consumer platforms Disney+ and Hulu.
Recent films include the Emmy-nominated winner of the IDA Award for Best Feature “The Tale of Silyan;” Oscar® and Peabody nominee “Sugarcane;” Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award winner “Bobi Wine: The People’s President;” Emmy Award winner “Lost In The Jungle;” Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated “Fire of Love;” Emmy and Peabody Award winner “The Territory;” BAFTA nominees “The Rescue” and “Becoming Cousteau;” and Oscar- and BAFTA winner “Free Solo.” For more information visit films.nationalgeographic.com, or find us on Facebook, Twitter,Instagram, and YouTube.