Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi are the powerhouse husband and wife duo behind some of the most inspiring and sweat-inducing documentaries of recent years. Across their careers, the pair have recounted the story of Alex Honnold, the first person to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without any ropes (Free Solo), chronicled the heroic rescue of the trapped Thai soccer team in 2018 (The Rescue), and, most recently, restored the original footage from Ernest Shackleton’s phenomenal journey to Antarctica in the early 20th Century, and followed the team who discovered his ship over a century later (Endurance). Notoriously hard workers, the pair have already found their next project, and it sounds like a nail-biter.
Speaking to MovieWeb to promote Endurance, Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi revealed the pair’s next project. Vaserhelyi teased:
“We’re very much enjoying [working on]- are you familiar with the story of the place that crashed in the Amazon with the family?”
The story the director refers to happened in mid-2023, when a plane crashed in the Amazon, killing everyone on board except four children. The children were forced to survive over a month in the rainforest before being rescued and taken to a hospital in Columbia. Vaserhelyi further explained:
“It was a mom, two other indigenous members, and her four children. The mom died immediately, and the four children, who were 13, 10, 5, and 11 months old, had to endure 40 days lost in the jungle.”
As well as revealing the phenomenal premise for their next doc, the director also revealed that audiences can expect to be transported on that journey sometime in 2025.
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi Are Obsessed With Stories About Beating the Odds
Who doesn’t love a good underdog story? While cinema is filled with famous underdogs (especially in the sports genre), rising up to defeat the most popular teams/players, like in Rocky, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, or Moneyball, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi prefer stories where the dominant force is nature itself.
The pair met while Vaserhelyi was directing Meru, which focused on three elite climbers and their obsession with reaching the summit of Mount Meru, Tanzania (one of which was Jimmy Chin). The duo are most famous for Free Solo, which followed elite climber Alex Honnold as he became the first person to free solo (climbing without ropes) El Capitan. The movie won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, catapulting their careers into the spotlight.
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Their newest film, Endurance, shines a new light on the famous tale of Ernest Shackleton. Wanting to be the first person to reach the South Pole, Shackleton and his crew of 26 sailed for Antarctica. Barely making it through the frozen coast, his ship, the Endurance, was trapped by ice and the crew were forced to survive for over a year and a half on the barren icy tundra. Miraculously, all 27 of them survived, thanks to Shackleton’s leadership.