Free Solo

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (2018)

Alex Honnold Rated 15 Run time 100 mins

Winner of Best Documentary Feature at the 2019 Academy Awards
Winner of Best Documentary at the 2019 BAFTAs

From award-winning documentary film-maker E. Chai Vasarhelyi and world-renowned photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin 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 3,000ft 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.

97% – Rotten Tomatoes
8.2/10 – IMDB

“A visually dizzying but also thought-provoking film about one man’s pinnacle of achievement.”

“There is something epic and disturbing about Honnold’s singularity, his desire to be the one person on the planet who can do something that no one else can.”

Article: Human spirit climbs to another level in Free Solo – The Guardian

Opinion: The Free Solo documentary addressed some uncomfortable truths, but ignored others – Climbing