Chai Vasarhelyi
Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are Academy Award®-winning filmmakers and the directors/producers of “Free Solo,” an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold and winner of seven Emmys®, a BAFTA and the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019. Their first film together, “Meru,” won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2015 and was on the 2016 Oscar® shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. More recently, they directed and produced “Wild Life,” a sweeping portrait of conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins chronicling their fight to preserve wild land in Chile and Argentina. Other projects include National Geographic’s DGA-nominated and Emmy Award-winning documentary “The Rescue,” chronicling the against-all-odds rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand; “Return to Space,” about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the top 10 on Netflix’s most-watched films list; and the National Geographic series “Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin.” Chin and Vasarhelyi’s first scripted feature, “Nyad,” about Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Florida, and starring Jodie Foster and Annette Bening is now streaming on Netflix.
Vasarhelyi’s other films as a director include “Incorruptible” (Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award 2016); “Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love” (Oscilloscope, 2009), which premiered at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals; “A Normal Life” (Tribeca Film Festival, Best Documentary 2003); and “Touba” (SXSW, Special Jury Prize Best Cinematography in 2013). Vasarhelyi has directed two New York Times Op Docs, two episodes for Netflix’s “Abstract” and two episodes for ESPN’s “Enhanced.” She has received grants from the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bertha Britdoc, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a member of the DGA, the AMPAS, and holds a B.A. in comparative literature from Princeton University.
Jimmy Chin is also a National Geographic photographer and professional mountain athlete who has led and documented cutting-edge expeditions around the world for over 20 years. His photographs have graced the covers of National Geographic Magazine and the New York Times Magazine; and his first book of photography, “There and Back,” became a New York Times Best Seller in 2021.
Vasarhelyi and Chin split their time between New York City and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with their daughter, Marina, and son, James.
