Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar- winning wife and husband filmmaking team behind Free Solo, are set to make a film about the ill-fated 1924 ascent of Mount Everest by British climbers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, with the question still unresolved of whether they reached the summit.
The film has been inspired by a National Geographic expedition to the Himalayas led by Chin that last month discovered Irvine’s boot, sock and severed foot on a glacier beneath Everest. This follows on from the discovery of Mallory’s remains in 1999
The chance discovery of Irvine’s boot is expected to answer some of the remaining questions over the Mallory/Irvine climb.
Chin’s expedition wasn’t actually concerned with Mallory and Irvine - and he and Vasarhelyi hadn’t even been thinking about a movie about the pair. “That was not the intention,” Vasarhelyi said. ”We were not making a Mallory film [but]I am sure we will now have to make something.”
She said that the boot was “such a significant discovery” that a film will most likely now follow.
One angle it is expected to pursue is the trauma endured by the First World War generation
“What were the events and the emotional conditions, the character forming moments in your life that landed you at the base of Mount Everest?” Vasarhelyi said of a question the film will ask.
Vasarhelyi added she has been discussing the background to the Mallory/Irvine expedition with renowned mountaineer Jon Krakauer, the author of ‘Into Thin Air’.
“Jon Krakauer is a really close friend. He is my confidant when Jimmy is away on tricky expeditions,” she said. “We were just talking about how so many of these men after World War One who were traumatised went off to Mount Everest and the mountains to try to find and sort through things.”
Vasarhelyi was speaking in London this week after attending the BFI London Film Festival premiere of Endurance, the National Geographic documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-15 expedition to the Antarctic and the 2022 expedition which found the wreckage of his ship The Endurance, sunk in 1915. The film was directed by Vasarhelyi, Chin and Natalie Hewit.
The next feature to go into production to be directed by Vasarhelyi and Chin is likely to be Sony-backed fiction thriller Eruption, based on the novel by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.
They are currently “finishing up” another new feature documentary, Lost In The Amazon, about four children surviving for 40 days in the jungle following a plane crash. This has also been made with National Geographic Films and has been co-directed by Juan Camilo Cruz.
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