Chai Vasarhelyi is the Academy Award®-winning co-director of FREE SOLO. She will deliver an exclusive session on documentary filmmaking that defies the limits of form, technical craft, and even gravity. Alongside creative collaborator Jimmy Chin, Chai’s prolific body of work includes climbing expedition chronicle Meru and multiple acclaimed projects for National Geographic, such as The Rescue (a gripping account of the Tham Luang cave rescue), Love+War (focusing on war photographer Lynsey Addario), Lost in the Jungle (about the search for four young plane crash survivors in the Colombian rainforest), and Wild Life (detailing the decades-long love story of conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins).
In the session, titled Limitless Filmmaking with Chai Vasarhelyi, Chai will join us remotely to share invaluable insights into her creative practice, the power and perils of filming in extreme environments, and her methods for crafting complex global stories that have reached and resonated with audiences around the world. Before leading the AIDC Regionality Program on the Sunshine Coast on August 7, Nick L’Barrow spoke with Chai about what drew her to documentary filmmaking, and how she honed her craft of unique observation through experience.
Nick: I’m curious to know when was the first moment in your life you realised the power that filmmaking holds to not just tell interesting stories, but untold, powerful stories like the ones you have brought to life in your documentaries?
Chai Vasarhelyi: I always kind of thought of myself as a journalist first and foremost. I’m 47, so I grew up in a different time. I was the only bi-racial kid in my school in New York City. I grew up between cultures, between communities, between languages, between experiences. I grew up speaking three languages at home. My mom is Chinese. My dad is Hungarian. Both of my parents were immigrants. So I’ve always been acutely aware that I would see things through a lens that my peers and classmates didn’t necessarily look at them. In my junior year of college, the war in Kosovo broke out, and Richard Holbrook, who was the architect of the Dayton Accords that ended the war in Yugoslavia, was speaking at Princeton that day. And he wouldn’t answer my questions about what was happening. I was editing the [college] newspaper at the time, so I was like, “We have to figure this out ourselves”. This was also the beginning of the DSLR revolution. There was cheaper access to movie making equipment. So, that film was called ‘A Normal Life’, and I had met these translators who were my age at the time – around 20, 21. But, they had grown up in Kosovo, waiting for war because they were Albanians living under a Serbian authoritarian regime, and they knew the only way out was a civil war. That film won an award at the Tribeca Film Festival and it kind of started my career. But I have always felt like I was in a unique position as kind of a translator, or someone who could observe something, or be sensitive to something that maybe other people weren’t because of their experiences. And that kind of became a craft I honed.
Nick: How did honing that craft then help you decide what kind of stories you wanted to tell, or people you wanted to investigate?
CV: It’s always been the same equation for me. If you look at my body of work, it’s incredibly diverse or disparate. The thing that unifies them is that my heart was interested in the subject, and that the film’s idea was to leave the world a little bit better than how you found it. In my early films, before Jimmy Chin and I met, they were very political and mostly in foreign languages, and maybe about subject matter that people weren’t necessarily interested in, or weren’t necessarily “commercial”. But when I honed that craft, and was given something like Meru, it wasn’t just something I enjoyed but it was a muscle I could seriously exercise. What kept on motivating me was that, at the time, I was falling in love with Jimmy – which is why I made Meru – but it was really important to tell his personal story in its best possible form. Then we were raising a family when we made Free Solo. Someone like Alex [Honnold] was very moving to me because it was all about the idea of what is your life except for how you spend your time. Alex was so singular in that he has thought about his mortality that anyone else. He’s so intelligent, and he’s so intentional that it was extraordinary. But then while we were filming, I became acutely aware that what is scary for him is entering into a relationship. I was an outsider. I’m not a climber. But I could see this other thing happening and then I found Alex’s bravery could be translated in many different ways.
Nick: You’ve made many films about incredible people doing incredible things. How much does the ambition and tenacity of the people you make films about fuel your own passion, ambition and tenacity as a filmmaker?
CV: I’d say for any filmmaker, nonfiction or fiction, you have to love what you do, or else there’s no point doing it. Making a film can be such a risk, especially nonfiction. You just don’t know what’s going to happen. You can’t invent it. So my thing is, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to give everything. I have to know that I’m committed or interested in the values behind the story, right? That’s why I do it. Also, now I have two kids and I’d much rather hang out with them and be a watercolour painter than work on something that takes away from the human experience.
Nick: How has documentary filmmaking evolved over the last two decades that you’ve been involved with it – both as a filmmaker and an audience member?
CV: It’s been amazing. I feel like I’ve lived through this great technological revolution that allowed more people access to be telling their own stories, and to tell other people’s stories. I’ve also lived through this golden age of non-fiction filmmaking where something like Free Solo was a blockbuster event in theatres. That was year where we had R.G.B, Won’t You Be My Neighbour?, Three Perfect Strangers. People would go to the theaters to watch nonfiction films. Then the pandemic happened, and streaming happened. I’ve also witnessed the demise of journalism, the rise of social media, the ability to be stuck in your own echo chambers. And now there is less space to tell well researched, grounded, riveting stories because investigative journalism is under attack. So, I think nonfiction filmmaking is more important than ever. And the fact that more people have access to it is important. I think there are a lot of positives, but it’s also hard because the power is being concentrated in fewer and fewer people’s hands. So the type of work we do still really matters.
Nick: I want to ask specifically about Regionality, where you are speaking in a few weeks. I think an event like this is a wonderful chance for documentary filmmakers, both established and upcoming, to hear your stories and to network with likeminded creatives. How important is something like having a strong network and team around you to pull off the creativity you’ve achieved?
CV: The best example is that in my post-production crew – my audio supervisor and mixer – I met them both over 20 years ago when I worked for Mike Nichols on Closer. I made my first doco and they mixed it on that stage for free. My audio supervisor is a woman, and she won, like, every award for Free Solo from every possible guild. She was the only woman who got on that stage. So, I think that your community and your networks are everything. It’s how filmmakers get access to stories and resources. That’s really important. Also, an old fashioned piece of advice is that it’s never too late to write a thank you, in the same way you should always be able to ask for what you want. You have to be able to give and receive graciously. If you can do that, you can always ask again. Memory is long. Life is long. Communities are small. It’s important to be a good citizen in that way. And I know that’s not something that has existed in Hollywood the whole time, but for me it’s a non-negotiable. Everyone can have an opinion, and I’ll listen to that opinion. At the end of the day, I am the director, so I make the decision. But we’re enriched by our communities, by our collaborators, by our networks, and you have to participate to be able to foster them and raise people up.
Thank you to Chai for her time! Chai Vasarhelyi will be presenting Limitless Filmmaking at Regionality Sunshine Coast 2026 on Friday August 7. You can find more information here.
