- 6/22/2025
Co-Director/Producer Chai Vasarhelyi talks to The Inside Reel about approach, context, logistics, inspiration, heart and technology in regards to her new documentary film: “Endurance” from National Geographic and available on Hulu & Disney+.
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00:00Why we go, I cannot say.
00:15Today is the day.
00:17What the impelling thought is that makes explorers, I cannot describe.
00:21Come on, boys!
00:22And as long as there is any mystery on this globe, it is not only man's right...
00:26Oh, my God.
00:27Look at that.
00:28But it's duty to try to unravel it.
00:36Could you talk about when you look at concepts, like something like this,
00:40was it just the fact that it's not been done before?
00:43Or where do you look at for inspiration?
00:46And how did this one come about specifically?
00:49What do you mean inspiration?
00:50Like, what work do I like or why do we do it?
00:53Both.
00:53What work do you like and why you guys do it?
00:57Because it seems like you have to have that ambition, that enthusiasm, that just sort
01:01of need to make these films.
01:05It's funny.
01:05Like, if you'd asked Jimmy this question, his answer is different than mine.
01:10But mine really comes from a pretty nihilistic place of dread where, you know, there's only
01:16one temperature.
01:17There's only one speed.
01:18It has to be, like, all in, right?
01:21And I think after pre-solo, like, we really realized, like, we have a platform.
01:27And, like, if we're going to do something, we understand how much work we're going to
01:31put in.
01:31Because it is, like, relentless.
01:33It's perfectionist.
01:34It's, you know, the real question is why would you make anyone watch anything unless
01:38you've tried your best and did your best?
01:39And also, we have, like, two amazing kids who are, like, in that vulnerable age, like,
01:44between, like, under 11.
01:46And, you know, I waited later to have children.
01:50So, it's, like, kind of, like, I feel like time was finite.
01:52I also don't know how many films I'm going to make because they worked there so hard.
01:55So, it has to, it comes from a place of dread where, like, no, it's always no.
02:00And then suddenly, and then slowly it stays with you long enough that you're, like, I have
02:04to.
02:05Okay, we have to.
02:06And so, then, like, all guns blazing, all, you know, all cylinders burning.
02:13And it has to be meaningful because the world is complicated.
02:17So, it has to kind of project the values and the ideas we believe are good.
02:24We tried once before in 2019 to search for the endurance.
02:29It felt like my whole life had been converging upon that moment.
02:33And then it all went wrong.
02:35Imagine being here in a little wooden boat.
02:37No GPS.
02:38No nothing.
02:40And then the leader says, oh, by the way, boys, we're stuck.
02:43And we're going to spend the winter here.
02:44You both also, the thing is that you didn't just relegate yourself to documentaries.
02:51You also do narrative.
02:53So, it's knowing, it's about the human experience on both sides, both in real life and how it's
03:00represented in pop culture, which is easy.
03:03Interesting because Free Solo did that.
03:05But the Nyad is completely different.
03:07And it does the same job in a much different way.
03:11Does that make sense?
03:12No, but that's the fun of it.
03:13So, like, I would say the why and why we do it is the same for all those films.
03:17From Nyad to the rescue, to wildlife, to endurance, right?
03:22And to Free Solo.
03:24The why is right.
03:25It's like, I think it leaves, it projects the world we want our kids to live in.
03:28And it often looks at individuals who have been overlooked or who seem like they don't
03:34belong, but they actually just want to connect.
03:37And because that comes down to this question of, like, how do you connect?
03:39How do we belong?
03:40How do we connect?
03:43Does it have to do with perspective?
03:45I mean, because obviously, you're talking, it's almost, you're looking through the eyes of
03:48your kids, too, about how they're going to see, like, it's interesting how they see something
03:53now.
03:53And then when they see, like, this film, when they're, like, late teenagers or into their
03:5830s, it's interesting how film and documentaries and everything can sort of adjust the way you
04:04see life.
04:05It's interesting that you say that, because one, our children have never seen Meru.
04:08Jimmy's 17 times.
04:10It's rated R.
04:11Yeah.
04:13And they're 11 and 8 and haven't seen it.
04:15And now a lot of your friends have seen it.
04:17And I'm like, you still can't see it.
04:19Your dad smokes a cigarette and swears as f***ing 17 times.
04:23And now with AI technology, I could fix that, but I'm not going to.
04:28Anyway, it's interesting because perspective is really essential to our new film Endurance
04:35because, you know, the Ernest Shackleton story has been told over and over again.
04:40And for good reason.
04:41It's the greatest survival story ever kind of told.
04:44And, you know, we really relied on Frank Hurley, who was an amazing filmmaker, who Shackleton
04:54brought to the middle of the most remote place on earth and who shot, you know, film at the
05:00time.
05:01And not only did he shoot film, he couldn't bring it all back with him.
05:05And he had to save some of it from under the ice.
05:07So he actually edited it as he went in his head from memory.
05:11Didn't know that.
05:12And like he, like he shot glass plate photographs.
05:16And, um, and then the plates he chose to bring, he brought and we have.
05:20The plates he left, he didn't just leave.
05:23He broke them.
05:25Interesting.
05:25I'm like, is it because you don't want to be tempted to go back?
05:29Like, like, it's very deep.
05:30Like, I'm like, I don't understand this phenomenon.
05:34We're ready.
05:35Yes.
05:35Okay.
05:36Let's find the Endurance.
05:38We're still talking about Shackleton because this is the greatest tale of survival in history.
05:44And it's a story about failure.
05:45Success awaits.
05:46Dive ones.
05:47Let's go.
05:47In 1914, Shackleton was convinced the greatest Antarctic journey was yet to be done, crossing the Antarctic continent from one side to the other.
05:56So he dragged his men on a doomed quest.
06:00It's existential, which is interesting because it's very much meta for you because you guys are going back as documentary filmmakers to the same spot that he was, you know, with the possibility that it could, you know, I mean, even Munson was telling me, like, we could have gotten stuck ourselves, you know.
06:16Now, granted, we have satellite phones and it's a different thing.
06:18Munson would have been fine.
06:19I promise you, you would not starve for death.
06:21There would be no doctor to be in Neaton.
06:23They had, like, thousands of canisters of gas on that thing.
06:27And they were being actively tracked by, like, Norris.
06:31But just the idea.
06:33Just the idea.
06:34The idea.
06:35They also had, like, Gore-Tex and, you know, cutting-edge technology.
06:42But, yes, like, my favorite kind of intellectual game to play is, like, you know who the closest human is to the Weddell Sea, where they were?
06:52It's the International Space Station.
06:54Yeah.
06:55Yeah.
06:55Isn't that crazy?
06:56Yeah, that's crazy.
06:58It's crazy.
06:58I didn't even know that it was 10,000 feet down underneath that ice.
07:04That's the one thing that you never quite hear is you see the ice on the top, but you don't realize how far down it is.
07:10There's a fancy graphic.
07:12There's a fancy graphic, Tim.
07:13Yeah.
07:14Where they show, like, a little thing going down, and then you see the entire state building.
07:17And, like, that gets to my point in all films.
07:19No mountain is big enough.
07:20Nothing's deep enough.
07:21Like, you film something, and you're like, but really, what are the stakes?
07:25You know, like, it's so different than when you walk up to El Cap and Yosemite, and you're like, oh, this is where unicorns come from.
07:31Like, you know, like, it's a totally different film.
07:33But, yeah, no, it's that deep.
07:36And it's, like, what Nico Vincent did is extraordinary.
07:39Like, the scientific achievement, like, is crazy town.
07:43You know, not only did he get a subsea, you know, an autonomous submarine down there, but it was tethered with a fiber optic cable, which is, like, what's in your wall, right?
07:53Yeah, yeah, wow.
07:55And so it's the real time, the discovery, because the risk is a leopard seal comes and eats the cable, or an iceberg hits it, or the submarine explodes, but you don't lose the data, which is what you've paid so much money to get there.
08:11Yeah, wow.
08:11And so that's when it was 2019, where they lost the whole thing.
08:17We lived long, dark days in the South.
08:20We lived through slow, dead days of toil, of struggle, sharp striving, and anxiety.
08:35As long as we can come out of this predicament with our lives, we shall not crumble.
08:42And please God, we will succeed.
08:44The thing I have to ask is that, because he was telling me about the laser scans when they got that 3D element.
08:50And also the 4K.
08:52But the fact is, you guys connected the idea with the image, just seeing, I thought that was fantastic, the way it showed how it transformed what you saw into where it was.
09:03That just brought it home.
09:05It's insane.
09:06It's insane.
09:07I'm so happy you mentioned that, because that, for me, is kind of the most innovative intellectually or creatively or as a documentarian thing that we did.
09:15And where, like, you know, these stories are dreams, right?
09:19Like, you see a photo.
09:21You hear a story.
09:22You read an account.
09:23And it's something about the tangibility of the find, where, like, you've seen, like, you look at those Hurley photos from Endurance, and you see the linoleum.
09:36And you think that was, like, 110 years ago.
09:38And then you see the perfectly preserved linoleum, you know, 10,050, and you're like, holy f**k.
09:47Like, that is documentary.
09:51You know, it's an idea, because, like, when you see the objects, like the broken plate or the navigation card, it lets you have access in a different way to the human experience.
10:01Because, you know, I've made two films about people I never met.
10:07One was Wildlife, where I never met Doug Tompkins.
10:10And it's about this one.
10:12And, you know, Jimmy met Doug Tompkins.
10:14But, like, you know, I never met Doug Tompkins.
10:17And it's just, like, when I looked at these parks that he constructed, I could kind of see through his eyes.
10:24But I had a tangible thing.
10:25But with Shackleton, like, the tangible was lost.
10:28You know, and I went to the British Museum with my son, who's eight, and was looking at the mummies and trying to, like, I was, like, you under, like, this is 5,000 years old, but this is the thing.
10:40But with so much of the, you know, this extreme exploration, like, the thing is gone.
10:46And, you know, like, but with Shackleton, they filmed it.
10:51Yeah.
10:51It had no audio.
10:53They left most of the film there.
10:55They broke their glass plates of their photos.
10:57And then, like, we had this, these, like, worldwide disaster events of World War I and World War II where all the records were destroyed in terms of audio recordings or whatever it is.
11:08And so, like, there's something about, like, where, like, brick and mortar, like, paper and pencil meets, like, digital on this film that I was, like, that's, like, interesting.
11:16All right, nice.
11:29Moving forward.
11:30Forward.
11:35Okay, let's find the endurance.
11:36But you provide context.
11:43That's what I, there's that, which could easily have been left out.
11:48The aspect of, at the, at the, at the, at the burial site of Shackleton.
11:54All those people around, that's, it really brings it home to the connection, both of the loss, of the joy, all these things.
12:02And I thought that was just really indicative, especially having, putting that photo on the gravestone.
12:08That was just something else.
12:10It's just, like, how do you, it's, it's timelessness.
12:13It's existential.
12:14It's, like, why are we on Earth, you know, to explore?
12:18Why are we going?
12:19Could you talk about that sort of thematic?
12:21Because, obviously, it encompasses everything you guys do.
12:24Well, one, it's interesting that it was Captain, his name is Justice.
12:29Yeah.
12:29His name is Actual Justice.
12:30He's a South African Black captain.
12:33And, like, his idea was to print out the picture and put it on the gravestone.
12:39Which is, like, a whole other conversation.
12:42Yeah.
12:42But, again, it's, like, so, you know, I think for us, it really comes back over and over again to this idea of, like, this human paradox.
12:50Where you're crazy enough or have, or arrogant enough to have these audacious dreams, you know, and everyone tells you, you can't do it.
12:59And you're, like, no, I can.
13:00But then it requires that, you know, the brick and mortar, the flesh and blood, you know, sweat and tears of the work required, which is the endurance.
13:10Which is, like, the diligence, the determination, the courage, but also, like, the ingenuity and the luck, right?
13:19And also the failure that's always inherent in all of this, right?
13:22Yeah.
13:23Like, for, like, we were really motivated to make this film because I think we're all living, you know, we look at our kids, like, they're too connected.
13:29Their brains are melting.
13:30We look at our relationship and, like, I have five devices that the hotel is trying to verify.
13:36Is it my device or not?
13:37And I was, like, it's actually my devices and my progeny's devices and Jimmy's devices.
13:40It's everyone's devices.
13:41And, you know, they navigated their way out with a sexton, you know, like, they relied on sunlight and they couldn't tell their latitude, you know?
13:54And additionally, it was the civility and the humanity they maintained despite Shackleton's great failure at, like, leading into a doomed expedition for his own personal reasons.
14:08Because he didn't want to go back.
14:09He needed to do it.
14:10Like, whatever it was.
14:11And he was an outsider.
14:12But it was how they maintained their humanity that made them survive, be it, you know, listening to your gramophone or putting on a play or sharing books or, you know, the milk, you know, like, I brought my milk.
14:28I don't even say anything.
14:30They see how horrible it is and they all share their milk or, like, they kill their dogs.
14:35But they kill them all at once, you know, where they could have taken it out.
14:39You know, they could have, like, like, made that meal last longer.
14:42They could have kept the cat alive.
14:44But on principle, that's not okay.
14:45Like, you know, it's like there's a certain dignity that I keep on being impressed about.
14:50And I don't know.
14:53Like, when I look at Jimmy and his friendships with his expedition mates, like, I see it over and over again.
14:58And I think that is, like, our fundamental humanity.
15:00It's like, who are you when you're faced with, like, I don't know, instrumentable challenges.
15:06Like, where does that je ne sais quoi come from?
15:09Where does that love come from or connection, you know?
15:12Because, like, Shackleton was an outsider.
15:13All of them were outsiders.
15:15We watched the death of the ship.
15:17Shackleton takes to the men.
15:19She's gone, boys.
15:21From that moment on, he's laser focused on getting those men home.
15:25Now we're stuck on ice and losing time.
15:28Patient.
15:28Comment est-ce qu'on peut être quelque chose qui s'inscrit dans l'histoire de Shackleton et renoncer?
15:33And, well, that leads to my last question.
15:35Thank you, Chuck.
15:35That's wonderfully said.
15:38What's interesting, though, is to take that idea, take that motivation, take that mindset and humanity.
15:44You guys do that as filmmakers.
15:46It's a different kind of thing.
15:47But it's also you're highlighting these different people and these different events that are so important to understand the human condition.
15:56Could you sort of talk about that?
15:58Because obviously now with the success, you can expand that.
16:01Could you talk about the pride in that but also the expectation in that?
16:07Because, you know, especially after Free Solo, it probably went, you know, could you talk about that and finding your balance, finding your guys' balance?
16:16Obviously, it sounds like your kids keep you balanced, too.
16:19My kids keep you balanced.
16:20But I think, again, it comes back to the spread idea.
16:22It's like, I don't want to make a movie.
16:25Yeah.
16:26It just, I know how much it takes.
16:28And I don't know how many movies we're going to make.
16:31Jimmy would be happily playing in the mountains all day, every day.
16:34And, you know, who, like, it's everything comes at a price.
16:38But the question is, like, if we have a certain platform to remind people that our Earth is important or, like, that being kind is important or that it's okay to be an outsider, but you can still find a way to connect, then let's do it.
16:53Because that matters.
16:55You know, and I can, at the end of the day, I always call it the mirror test.
16:58Like, we're making a film.
16:59And I'm, like, because, you know, my whole, like, special story is, and we won an Oscar for free solo.
17:08Every person in any film I've ever made, and I'd made four films before meeting Jimmy, called or texted or emailed, because we're all still in touch.
17:17Because, like, those relationships are forever.
17:19So, basically, it was that, you know, that's what it has to be.
17:29That's the bar.
17:31Like, it has to be that meaningful to make us leave our homes, to make Jimmy come out of the mountains, or, you know, I don't know.
17:39It's, like, it just takes so much to make a movie.
17:40It's, like, a miracle every time it gets done.
17:43And, but I think that's why we're so lucky, because we get to do that, too.
17:49We're not finding anything at all, and temperatures are going to go off a cliff, and we'll have to call the search off.
17:55As long as we can come out of this predicament with our lives, we shall not grumble.
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