Chin & Vasarhelyi's Everest Doc Premieres at Telluride — SkimNews
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- "Everest: The Other Side" (NatGeo) world premiered at Telluride Film Festival, where Oprah Winfrey hosted a party and moderated the Q&A with subject Jim Morrison; the film screens three times at TIFF before its October 30 theatrical release.
- Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin directed from their Little Monster Films production company, with Vasarhelyi masterminding the edit from New York while Chin summited Everest alongside Morrison to supervise filming with a 12-person crew including Sherpas and three cinematographers.
- Jim Morrison completed the first ski descent of Everest's North Face — a 9,000-foot face that had only been summited five times — in 4 hours and 5 minutes, fulfilling the quest he and partner Hilaree Nelson had planned before her death.
- Morrison lost his first wife and two children in a 2011 small plane crash, then lost Nelson when cinematographer Pemba Sherpa captured her skiing into an avalanche during training for the Everest climb; Morrison told Telluride he "almost regret[s] having" the footage.
- Vasarhelyi revealed she and Chin separated in 2025 but continue running Little Monster Films together, saying she put personal matters aside to finish the film honoring Nelson.
- National Geographic funded the expedition, with Chin calling it a "big swing" for the network; Vasarhelyi noted the mountain's scale makes every equipment load human-powered at 29,000 feet, "as high as airplanes fly."
Why it matters: The documentary gives NatGeo a prestige awards-season entry from the Oscar-winning "Free Solo" team, while Morrison's feat — a first descent of Everest's rarely climbed North Face completed as a tribute to a dead partner — delivers the kind of grief-and-resilience narrative that resonates at festivals and on streaming platforms. Vasarhelyi's disclosure that she and Chin separated in 2025 adds a personal dimension to their professional partnership heading into the film's release.
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