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Free Solo is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin that profiles rock climber Alex Honnold on his quest to perform the first-ever free solo climb of a route on El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park in California, in June 2017.
The film premiered at the 45th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2018, and also screened at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the . It was released in the United States on September 28, 2018, and grossed over $28 million at the worldwide box office. Free Solo received acclaim from critics and numerous accolades, including winning Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.
Honnold is a shy loner who has lived and traveled alone in his van for several years, but recently he is sometimes joined by his new girlfriend Sanni McCandless. On one climb with McCandless, while she is feeding his rope through a grigri on his descent, she makes a mistake, and he falls, suffering some compression fractures. He considers breaking up with McCandless over the incident, but they remain together.
In the summer of 2016, Honnold and Tommy Caldwell go climbing in Morocco to prepare for his El Capitan free solo. The film crew also prepares, discussing where to place cameras to best capture Honnold’s climb while minimizing distractions and interference, and also the ethical dilemma of documenting this climb, knowing Honnold may die on camera. Honnold accepts an offer to receive a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan in order to understand his brain's response to fear, and the results show that there is little or no activity in his amygdala in response to average stimuli.
In the fall of 2016, Honnold sprained his ankle on El Capitan while traditional climbing (using ropes and protection equipment) on the first section of Freerider, the giant multi-pitch slab known as Freeblast and graded at . Not wanting to miss the chance to do the free climb that year, he only takes a brief break from climbing and resumes his preparations while his foot is still swollen. Around Halloween, Honnold and McCandless carve pumpkins with Caldwell and his wife and children. In an interview, Honnold says his family did not hug and the word "love" was not used in his household, as his father lacked the ability to form emotional bonds.
Honnold and Caldwell rappelling down Freerider, and Honnold outlines his route, discussing the areas about which he is apprehensive. One section offers him two alternative pathways, which he calls "The Teflon Corner" (an internal right-angled section with a smooth slippery surface) and "The Boulder Problem" (a particularly intricate piece of the wall that has to be finished with either a jump or a wide "karate kick" stance). Both the crew and McCandless suggest abandoning the plan, and Honnold says he does not want his friends to see him die if he falls during the climb. News of the death of Swiss climber Ueli Steck, with whom he had climbed, causes Honnold to reflect on his own risk-taking, but Caldwell comments on how little it ultimately seemed to affect him. When he finally decides to try to free solo El Capitan, he abandons the attempt after the slab section of Freeblast, and filmmaker Jimmy Chin worries that the filming is putting unnecessary pressure on him.
After giving up on his plan to free solo El Capitan that season, Honnold and McCandless buy a house in Las Vegas. Then, on June 3, 2017, he again attempts a free solo climb of Freerider. McCandless leaves just before he starts, expressing her apprehensions in an interview. The film crew watches nervously as he makes his way through each of the most difficult parts of the climb, and one cameraman turns away several times, as he cannot bear to watch. Honnold completes the free solo in 3 hours and 56 minutes. He later does an interview with a journalist in which he contemplates his future, and the future of free solo climbing.
The production team captured 700 hours of footage using 12 cameras. This included cameramen on the ground, cameramen on the cliff face, remote trigger cameras, and a helicopter with a 1,000 mm lens to capture the 4k video. The cameramen were able to so effectively capture Honnold’s climb from different vantage points because they were all experienced climbers themselves. Wireless mics could not be used to record sound from Honnold due to his distance from the cameras, so the filmmakers created a special recording device and had Honnold carry it inside his chalk bag.
The film was made by National Geographic Partners, which at the time of the film's release was majority-owned by 21st Century Fox, with the remainder owned by the National Geographic Society.
Its opening weekend, Free Solo earned $300,804 from four theaters, its per-venue average of $75,201 surpassing both Eighth Grade for the highest per-venue average of 2018, and (2017) for the highest-ever per-venue average for a documentary. The film expanded to 41 theaters its second weekend, earning $562,786, and then grossed $859,051 from 129 theaters its third weekend and $1 million from 251 theaters its fourth weekend. During its fifth weekend in theaters, the film earned $1.06 million from 394 theaters, bringing its total box office gross to over $5 million.
Peter Debruge of Variety praised the pacing of the film, saying: "Apart from a slow stretch around the hour mark, the filmmakers keep things lively (with a big assist from Marco Beltrami's pulse-quickening score, the nail-biting opposite of Tim McGraw's soaring end-credits single, "Gravity")." Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair called the film "bracingly made" and felt the filmmakers properly conveyed the challenges and dangers faced by Honnold in his endeavors: " Free Solos detailed, transfixing portrait of their hero will at least show some sort of barrier to entry, communicating to those eager wannabes that very few people indeed are built quite like Alex Honnold. And thank goodness, in a way, for that."
Michael Hale of Sight and Sound praised the filming techniques and resulting effect, saying that an image reminiscent of Greek mythology is evoked as Honnold is captured scaling the immense wall of El Capitan. John Doyle of The Globe and Mail commended the "texture" of film, specifically the tension and intensity as Honnold repeatedly risks death, as well as the relatability of the scenes with Honnold and his girlfriend.
Sam Wollastan of The Irish Times wrote that the film effectively captures an amazing athletic feat, the emotional development of Honnold, and the budding romance between Honnold and McCandless. Jane Mulkerrins of The Times also praised this emotional development arc, remarking on the duality of the film as it examines Honnold's preparation and climb alongside his relationship with McCandless: "''Free captures the death-defying climb with vertigo-inducing camerawork. We see Honnold getting ready for the climb… At the same time, the armour of invincibility he's built up over the years fractures when he begins to fall in love with Sanni.”
| Toronto International Film Festival | September 16, 2018 | Free Solo | |||
| Hollywood Music in Media Awards | November 14, 2018 | Original Score – Documentary | Marco Beltrami | ||
| Original Song – Documentary | Tim McGraw and Lori McKenna | ||||
| Kendal Mountain Festival | November 17, 2018 | Grand Prize | Free Solo | ||
| IDA Documentary Awards | December 8, 2018 | Best Feature | Free Solo | ||
| Best Cinematography | Jimmy Chin, Clair Popkin and Mikey Schaefer | ||||
| National Board of Review | January 8, 2019 | Top 5 Documentaries | Free Solo | ||
| Cinema Eye Honors | January 10, 2019 | Audience Choice Prize | Free Solo | ||
| Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography | Jimmy Chin, Clair Popkin and Mikey Schaefer | ||||
| Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Score | Marco Beltrami | ||||
| Outstanding Achievement in Production | Free Solo | ||||
| Producers Guild of America Awards | January 19, 2019 | Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes and Shannon Dill | ||
| Directors Guild of America Awards | February 2, 2019 | Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin | ||
| British Academy Film Awards | February 10, 2019 | Best Documentary | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Shannon Dill and Evan Hayes | ||
| February 17, 2019 | Best Documentary Film | Free Solo | |||
| February 24, 2019 | Best Documentary Feature | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes and Shannon Dill | |||
| Primetime Emmy Awards | September 14, 2019 | Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media within an Unscripted Program | Free Solo | ||
| Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin | ||||
| Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program | Jimmy Chin, Clair Popkin and Mikey Schaefer | ||||
| Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program | Bob Eisenhardt | ||||
| Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction Program (Single or Multi-Camera) | Deborah Wallach, Filipe Messeder, Jim Schultz, Roland Vajs and Nuno Bento | ||||
| Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Nonfiction Program (Single or Multi-Camera) | Tom Fleischman, Ric Schnupp, Tyson Lozensky and Jim Hurst | ||||
| Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special (Original Dramatic Score) | Marco Beltrami and Brandon Roberts |
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