Oscar Winner: Best Feature Documentary. “Free Solo is a National Geographic head-spinner from husband-and-wife co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. It 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. Honnold has done more than 1,000 solitary ascents and he’s here to tell about it.
“Free Solo details Honnold’s process as he preps to scale the 3,000-foot wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park with just his fingers and feet. His mother, Dierdre Wolownick, worries. So does new girlfriend Sanni McCandless. So what drives this dude? A pre-climb MRI indicates a brain that doesn’t register what most brains would register under the circumstances: crippling fear. As Honnold sees it, ‘Nobody achieves anything great by being happy and cozy.’” - Rolling Stone