Oscar-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin dug into the challenges of making Everest: The Other Side at Deadline’s Contenders London event on Saturday.
The heart-stopping documentary follows the quest of mountaineer-skiers Jim Morrison, who joined them on stage, and Hilaree Nelson to scale the North Face of Mount Everest and the ski down it.
Thousands of people have ascended the mountain from the southeast ridge in Nepal, but only five had ever reached its summit from the North Face.
“I think it’s pretty safe to say this is the most difficult film we’ve made. It really required every experience that I’ve had as a climber and as a director and producer,” said Chin, who is himself a world-class mountaineer.
“A lot of the challenges we faced, I faced before, but in a smaller scale… the scope and scale of it was different, “ he said.
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Everest: The Other Side follows a string of works by Chai Vasarhelyi and Chin exploring people who push themselves to the limits of human endurance, including 2018 Oscar and Bafta-winning documentary Free Solo as well as The Rescue, and fiction feature Nyad based on the true story of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad.
“Very similar to Free Solo, we had to have a world-class team of mountaineers and climbers first, and they had to be world-class cinematographers and be able to operate at 28,000 feet, 29,000 feet,” said Chin.
Chai Vasarhelyi said that alongside capturing the physical feat at the heart of the documentary, there is also a deep love story and a “serious meditation” on taking risk.
“Risk was always part of this story, and then it turned into a more serious meditation on risk, which I think this film more than any other film I’ve made… really dives into the ethical implications,” she explained.
Asked why he continues to push himself to the limits, Morrison replied: “Why? Because I don’t know how not to do it. Yes, this film is certainly a meditation of mortality to a degree. It’s about a lot of things, but it’s something I’m starting to examine.”
“When we are out there and on the edge, we face mortality fairly consistently, and I’m not talking like we’re always in life and death situations, but you’re always making those assessments.”
