World-class climber and Free Solo star Alex Honnold is mapping out his summer plans, and naturally they call for adventure.
The man who famously ascended Yosemite’s El Capitan rock face without ropes will be doing some mountaineering in Alaska with his fellow climber and friend Tommy Caldwell. And they’re taking the long way to get there.
“The two of us are biking from his house in Colorado to Alaska… [undertaking] a few very large, difficult climb objectives along the way. So, it’s basically a 2,000-mile bike ride with quite a bit of hard climbing, culminating in a difficult climb in Alaska,” Honnold told an audience Thursday at Sheffield DocFest in the U.K. He was Zoomed in by remote for a panel discussion with National Geographic executives who outlined their upcoming documentary projects, including several that feature Honnold. The Alaska trip will be filmed for a series tentatively...
The man who famously ascended Yosemite’s El Capitan rock face without ropes will be doing some mountaineering in Alaska with his fellow climber and friend Tommy Caldwell. And they’re taking the long way to get there.
“The two of us are biking from his house in Colorado to Alaska… [undertaking] a few very large, difficult climb objectives along the way. So, it’s basically a 2,000-mile bike ride with quite a bit of hard climbing, culminating in a difficult climb in Alaska,” Honnold told an audience Thursday at Sheffield DocFest in the U.K. He was Zoomed in by remote for a panel discussion with National Geographic executives who outlined their upcoming documentary projects, including several that feature Honnold. The Alaska trip will be filmed for a series tentatively...
- 6/16/2023
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
After the secondhand altitude sickness, the most intense vicarious response inspired by the rock-climbing documentary “Free Solo” is pity — in part for its subject Alex Honnold, a daredevil single-mindedly driven to defy death, but more so for his girlfriend. Amidst all the terrifying, enthralling footage of Honnold scaling sheer cliffs, the standout scene finds him and now-wife Sanni McCandless having a frank discussion about the strain his passion has put on their relationship.
Continue reading ‘Torn’: A Grief-Stricken Family Comes Together In Max Lowe’s Deeply Personal Doc [Telluride Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Torn’: A Grief-Stricken Family Comes Together In Max Lowe’s Deeply Personal Doc [Telluride Review] at The Playlist.
- 9/3/2021
- by Charles Bramesco
- The Playlist
Free Solo’s path to likely Emmy nominations has been paved with gold—the Oscar kind.
The film about mountain climber Alex Honnold’s breathtaking ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan—without ropes—won the Academy Award in February for Best Documentary Feature. It’s now on Emmy nomination ballots in multiple nonfiction categories, including cinematography, picture editing, and directing.
Filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have spent part of the last few months simply adjusting to their Oscar win.
“It’s just a little surreal,” Chin admits, reflecting on that moment in the Oscar spotlight. “You understand how special it is, from coming up with the right idea to the production networks and a film that works that people embrace, your peers embrace.”
Free Solo has not only claimed awards but extraordinary box office returns—a theatrical run lasting months brought in more than $17.5 million in North America alone.
The film about mountain climber Alex Honnold’s breathtaking ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan—without ropes—won the Academy Award in February for Best Documentary Feature. It’s now on Emmy nomination ballots in multiple nonfiction categories, including cinematography, picture editing, and directing.
Filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have spent part of the last few months simply adjusting to their Oscar win.
“It’s just a little surreal,” Chin admits, reflecting on that moment in the Oscar spotlight. “You understand how special it is, from coming up with the right idea to the production networks and a film that works that people embrace, your peers embrace.”
Free Solo has not only claimed awards but extraordinary box office returns—a theatrical run lasting months brought in more than $17.5 million in North America alone.
- 6/14/2019
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo is a film event like no other. It is about the complex layer of human achievements, both physical and mental whilst set against a backdrop of a burgeoning love story involving the film’s subject, Alex Honnold. His love interest is his relatively new girlfriend Sanni McCandless, whom producers thanked profusely at the Oscars for “making the film interesting.” What you must know is that this heart-stopping and mind-blowing doc gives all viewers a chance to sit shotgun with Alex, a young man whose clear vision of who he was, is and wants to be remembered […]
The post Exclusive: Alex Honnold of Free Solo on the climb of a lifetime, Nat Geo award-winning doc airs Sunday appeared first on Monsters and Critics.
The post Exclusive: Alex Honnold of Free Solo on the climb of a lifetime, Nat Geo award-winning doc airs Sunday appeared first on Monsters and Critics.
- 3/1/2019
- by April Neale
- Monsters and Critics
A solo victory!
Free Solo won best documentary feature at Sunday’s 2019 Oscars, beating out Minding the Gap, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Of Fathers and Sons and Rbg.
Helen Mirren and Jason Momoa presented the award.
“Oh s—,” director Jimmy Chin said while accepting the honor.
“Thank you National Geographic for believing in us and hiring women and people of color,” added his wife and co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. “It was a work of an army and we appreciate you in every way. Thank you for our families and especially our two kids.”
Alex Honnold, who was the subject of the film,...
Free Solo won best documentary feature at Sunday’s 2019 Oscars, beating out Minding the Gap, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Of Fathers and Sons and Rbg.
Helen Mirren and Jason Momoa presented the award.
“Oh s—,” director Jimmy Chin said while accepting the honor.
“Thank you National Geographic for believing in us and hiring women and people of color,” added his wife and co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. “It was a work of an army and we appreciate you in every way. Thank you for our families and especially our two kids.”
Alex Honnold, who was the subject of the film,...
- 2/25/2019
- by Dana Rose Falcone
- PEOPLE.com
Three years ago when married filmmakers Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi (“Meru”) embarked on climbing documentary “Free Solo” (NatGeo), they had no idea what a nailbiter it would finally be. By the time they unveiled the gorgeous 4K spectacle at Telluride over Labor Day weekend and watched it with an audience as well as their crew, they were stunned at how it brought back feelings of Ptsd. “It was crazy,” said Vasarhelyi. “Looking at dailies of the climb, it no longer affected me while we were cutting these scenes over and over again. But seeing it with an audience brought it back. My stomach fell out.”
During filming, the filmmakers weren’t the ones climbing the 3000-foot rock face of El Capitan without a rope, where any misstep would mean certain death. That was mountaineer Alex Honnold. But in some ways watching him and tracking him and not getting...
During filming, the filmmakers weren’t the ones climbing the 3000-foot rock face of El Capitan without a rope, where any misstep would mean certain death. That was mountaineer Alex Honnold. But in some ways watching him and tracking him and not getting...
- 2/15/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Three years ago when married filmmakers Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi (“Meru”) embarked on climbing documentary “Free Solo” (NatGeo), they had no idea what a nailbiter it would finally be. By the time they unveiled the gorgeous 4K spectacle at Telluride over Labor Day weekend and watched it with an audience as well as their crew, they were stunned at how it brought back feelings of Ptsd. “It was crazy,” said Vasarhelyi. “Looking at dailies of the climb, it no longer affected me while we were cutting these scenes over and over again. But seeing it with an audience brought it back. My stomach fell out.”
During filming, the filmmakers weren’t the ones climbing the 3000-foot rock face of El Capitan without a rope, where any misstep would mean certain death. That was mountaineer Alex Honnold. But in some ways watching him and tracking him and not getting...
During filming, the filmmakers weren’t the ones climbing the 3000-foot rock face of El Capitan without a rope, where any misstep would mean certain death. That was mountaineer Alex Honnold. But in some ways watching him and tracking him and not getting...
- 2/15/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
Some days during Oscar season when you work at Gold Derby, you wake up, smell the odds and realize that you must finally change one of your predictions if you want to protect your prognosticating reputation.
That happened this morning, when it dawned on me that I needed to switch to “Free Solo,” a vertiginous documentary about a 33-year-old man-boy named Alex Honnold who literally risks his very being by zealously participating in a sport that has snuffed out many a life of a fellow free-climbing enthusiast. I had previously clung to “Rbg,” a much-needed sane and safe harbor in the current political climate, the way Honnold hugs the slippery expanse of soaring rock faces with barely anything resembling equipment. I currently have a Ruth Bader Ginsberg action figure gazing down at me, ready to use her tiny plastic gravel on anything that would come between me and my keyboard.
That happened this morning, when it dawned on me that I needed to switch to “Free Solo,” a vertiginous documentary about a 33-year-old man-boy named Alex Honnold who literally risks his very being by zealously participating in a sport that has snuffed out many a life of a fellow free-climbing enthusiast. I had previously clung to “Rbg,” a much-needed sane and safe harbor in the current political climate, the way Honnold hugs the slippery expanse of soaring rock faces with barely anything resembling equipment. I currently have a Ruth Bader Ginsberg action figure gazing down at me, ready to use her tiny plastic gravel on anything that would come between me and my keyboard.
- 2/13/2019
- by Susan Wloszczyna
- Gold Derby
When most people watch “Free Solo,” which just earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, they will likely wince and grit their teeth at the death-defying climb that Alex Honnold makes up Yosemite’s El Capitan without any climbing gear.
But when Honnold watches the film, he cringes at the scene where he buys a house with his girlfriend.
“When we premiered the film at Telluride, Alex was cringing through the whole first hour of the movie,” co-director Chai Vasarhelyi told TheWrap. “During the actual climb, while everyone else was amazed, he was just sitting there smiling.”
“Climbing is his thing,” added Vasarhelyi’s directing partner Jimmy Chin. “He’s in his element when he does it and he does it every day. Even when we were touring promoting the film, he was going to gyms to climb on rock walls.”
Also Read: #OscarsSoMale? Lack of Major Female Nominees...
But when Honnold watches the film, he cringes at the scene where he buys a house with his girlfriend.
“When we premiered the film at Telluride, Alex was cringing through the whole first hour of the movie,” co-director Chai Vasarhelyi told TheWrap. “During the actual climb, while everyone else was amazed, he was just sitting there smiling.”
“Climbing is his thing,” added Vasarhelyi’s directing partner Jimmy Chin. “He’s in his element when he does it and he does it every day. Even when we were touring promoting the film, he was going to gyms to climb on rock walls.”
Also Read: #OscarsSoMale? Lack of Major Female Nominees...
- 1/22/2019
- by Jeremy Fuster
- The Wrap
A daredevil with a samurai’s intensity, Alex Honnold scales a vertiginous cliff without ropes in this visually staggering documentary
Here’s a film that brought to my mind Mary Poppins’s famous order: “Close your mouth please Michael, we are not a codfish.” I spent most of this film with my jaw on the floor. It’s a visually staggering documentary from National Geographic about the climber Alex Honnold who specialises in the most mind-boggling and gasp-inducing “free solo” climbs – without a rope, up sheer rock faces, the sort of thing usually undertaken by Tom Cruise or Spider-Man.
This film is about Honnold’s freakily dangerous free solo attempt in 2017 at El Capitan, the 3,000ft-high rock formation in Yosemite Valley, California. We see his difficult relationship with his girlfriend Sanni McCandless. Like all those close to Honnold, she is in the purest form of agony as Honnold makes his almost supernaturally difficult climb.
Here’s a film that brought to my mind Mary Poppins’s famous order: “Close your mouth please Michael, we are not a codfish.” I spent most of this film with my jaw on the floor. It’s a visually staggering documentary from National Geographic about the climber Alex Honnold who specialises in the most mind-boggling and gasp-inducing “free solo” climbs – without a rope, up sheer rock faces, the sort of thing usually undertaken by Tom Cruise or Spider-Man.
This film is about Honnold’s freakily dangerous free solo attempt in 2017 at El Capitan, the 3,000ft-high rock formation in Yosemite Valley, California. We see his difficult relationship with his girlfriend Sanni McCandless. Like all those close to Honnold, she is in the purest form of agony as Honnold makes his almost supernaturally difficult climb.
- 12/13/2018
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Free solo climber Alex Honnold on the rock face of Yosemite’s El Capitan, in National Geographic’s Free Solo. Photo courtesy of National Geographic Documentary Films (c)
Climbing a sheer mountain face is scary enough, but imagine doing it without even a rope. Free Solo follows just such a daring feat, as Alex Honnold scales Yosemite’s El Capitan…. without a rope. This National Geographic documentary offers breath-taking, dizzying views as the climber tackles the peak.
Yosemite’s daunting 3,000 foot high El Capitan rock face had never been climbed free solo when Alex Honnold set his sights on it. The documentary follows Honnold as he becomes the first person to climb it with no ropes or other safety gear, perhaps the greatest accomplishment in rock climbing history.
Free Solo follows Alex Honnold over about two years as he prepares for this never-before feat. The documentary was the winner at...
Climbing a sheer mountain face is scary enough, but imagine doing it without even a rope. Free Solo follows just such a daring feat, as Alex Honnold scales Yosemite’s El Capitan…. without a rope. This National Geographic documentary offers breath-taking, dizzying views as the climber tackles the peak.
Yosemite’s daunting 3,000 foot high El Capitan rock face had never been climbed free solo when Alex Honnold set his sights on it. The documentary follows Honnold as he becomes the first person to climb it with no ropes or other safety gear, perhaps the greatest accomplishment in rock climbing history.
Free Solo follows Alex Honnold over about two years as he prepares for this never-before feat. The documentary was the winner at...
- 10/12/2018
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
If mountain-climbing documentaries make you puke-dizzy, Free Solo is probably not a good idea. This National Geographic head-spinner from husband-and-wife co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin is extreme in the extreme. The focus is on Alex Honnold, a free climber who gives the finger to gravity every time he suits up. Honnold, 33, climbs alone, sees no need for such niceties as rope, harness and pitons and rejects the odds against surviving that come with the job. Free Solo even includes a morbid collage of dead climbers. No matter. Honnold...
- 9/27/2018
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
Earlier this year, professional adventure climber Alex Honnold scaled the 3,000 ft. El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — without a rope.
The death-defying climb — and the lead-up to it — is featured in the upcoming National Geographic documentary, Free Solo.
In a clip from the documentary, out Friday, Honnold, 33, has a candid conversation with girlfriend Sanni McCandless about the dangers of free solo climbing — and the risks he’s willing to take despite her presence in his life.
“Would putting me into the equation ever actually change anything?” asks Honnold. “Would you actually make decisions differently?”
Answers Honnold, “If I...
The death-defying climb — and the lead-up to it — is featured in the upcoming National Geographic documentary, Free Solo.
In a clip from the documentary, out Friday, Honnold, 33, has a candid conversation with girlfriend Sanni McCandless about the dangers of free solo climbing — and the risks he’s willing to take despite her presence in his life.
“Would putting me into the equation ever actually change anything?” asks Honnold. “Would you actually make decisions differently?”
Answers Honnold, “If I...
- 9/27/2018
- by Emily Zauzmer
- PEOPLE.com
Movie theaters would be wise to include Dramamine along with tickets purchased for Free Solo. Nausea-inducing in the most spectacular way, the new documentary chronicles rock climber Alex Honnold’s rope-less ascent in 2017 of Yosemite’s El Capitan, a vertical cliff face twice the height of the Empire State Building.
The feat, widely considered the greatest in the history of rock climbing, required years of preparation. Free Solo takes viewers into that process and ultimately right alongside Honnold for the climb itself, which was filmed from multiple angles. It is...
The feat, widely considered the greatest in the history of rock climbing, required years of preparation. Free Solo takes viewers into that process and ultimately right alongside Honnold for the climb itself, which was filmed from multiple angles. It is...
- 9/26/2018
- by Joe McGovern
- Rollingstone.com
When Alex Honnold climbed El Capitan — the 3,000-foot rock formation in Yosemite National Park — without a rope, the climbing star became a national sensation. Back in June 2017, however, the world just had to take his word for it; with “Free Solo,” the riveting documentary from “Meru” co-directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Honnold’s achievement receives the big-screen closeup it deserves. When the movie premiered at Telluride, Honnold received a rock star’s welcome, and National Geographic is releasing the tense crowdpleaser into the fall as an instant awards contender.
While the filmmakers managed to capture every stage of Honnold’s climb in 2017, “Free Solo” also explores the years leading up to that big moment, including the evolution of Honnold’s relationship with his girlfriend Sanni McCandless and Honnold’s childhood. In recent weeks, the 33-year-old Honnold has taken a break from his globe-trotting routine to promote “Free Solo...
While the filmmakers managed to capture every stage of Honnold’s climb in 2017, “Free Solo” also explores the years leading up to that big moment, including the evolution of Honnold’s relationship with his girlfriend Sanni McCandless and Honnold’s childhood. In recent weeks, the 33-year-old Honnold has taken a break from his globe-trotting routine to promote “Free Solo...
- 9/26/2018
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
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