From award-winning documentary filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi (Meru), world-renowned photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin, and our own Oscar-nominated editor Bob Eisenhardt, comes National Geographic Documentary Film’s Free Solo, a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of the free soloist climber Alex Honnold, as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream: climbing the face of the world’s most famous rock, the 3,000 foot El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, without a rope. Celebrated as one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind, Honnold’s climb set the ultimate standard: perfection or death. Succeeding in this challenge, Honnold enters his story in the annals of human achievement. Free Solo is both an edge-of-your seat thriller and an inspiring portrait of an athlete who exceeded our current understanding of human physical and mental potential. The result is a triumph of the human spirit. – Peter Biskind
“Free Solo is an engaging study of a perfect match between passion and personality.” — Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times
“It’s this profound, human tension that makes Free Solo such a gripping and rewarding documentary to watch.” — David Sims, The Atlantic
“Chin and Vasarhelyi have made a film that works both as a praiseworthy historical document rich in context and visual detail, and as a gripping emotional journey full of mythical resonance.” — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Tommy Caldwell, Jimmy Chin, Alex Honnold, Sanni McCandless
National Geographic Documentary Films