Everest: The Other Side

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin won an Oscar for 'Free Solo' and had already taken their cameras into the Himalayas for 'Meru'. With 'Everest: The Other Side' they go back to the mountains, this time to the north face of Everest, and to a goal nobody had ever reached.

Thousands of climbers have summited Everest by the standard southeast ridge from Nepal, but only a handful have gone straight up the north face, and no one had ever skied down it. That's what ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, partners in life as well as on the mountain, set out to do. The film follows them as they plan the expedition and make their first practice runs, and it doesn't shy away from the question of risk. Nelson, a mother of two, is asked how she squares that with her career, and she's blunt about it.

Chin, a climber as much as a filmmaker, joins the team, and he and Vasarhelyi appear on screen arguing over how far they're prepared to go. But the mountain has its own plans, and the shoot ends up taking the story somewhere none of them expected.

Made by National Geographic Documentary Films and shot with IMAX screens in mind, it premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival before playing Telluride and Toronto, and opened in US cinemas on 30 October 2026. Critics praised the images and argued over its attitude to danger, with an average of 6.8 out of 10 across the 18 outlets collected on Movienco.

• Documentary
• Sports