Just imagine this — a crew of dozens of Sherpas and filmmakers who have to trek to the north face of Everest and establish three successive camps up the steepest part of the mountain over the course of months, while avalanches are continuously destroying their handiwork, and potentially their crew. Even if that goes according to plan (and of course it doesn’t), then there’s summiting the mountain, an extraordinary feat, and then skiing down it, which, even if done perfectly, would take 4 or 5 hours. One single fall, one missed edge, on the vertiginous face, and there you go, all the way down the mountain, like a sack of potatoes, only the potatoes are broken human bones in a bag of skin no one can easily reach. Oh, and people have to film this somehow.
Ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson, her hair blowing in the wind, looks into the camera in Everest: The Other Side.
“It is cinematic glory at an incomprehensible level.”
Just as in Free Solo, at some point in Everest: The Other Side, you start to get the sneaking suspicion that you are being entertained by mental illness. Is that ok? Should someone be financially incentivized to risk their life for my pleasure? Americans… maybe?… but what about sherpas, who may have fewer options to make a living? This feeling is not unlike the cognitive dissonance of being a carnivore — sure, death may be involved, but it tastes so good! And yes, if you watch this film, you may be awed by visual and narrative feats that surpass even the gastronomical delights of bacon. But I feel like now we need a word for the equivalent of cinematic vegetarianism — people who would opt out of the viewing of the film because watching it makes you morally complicit in a cost that is too high to bear. Are you a cinematerian or a movievore? I don’t know which one I am, but I’m both thrilled and unsettled.
To other documentary filmmakers: if you are shooting for an Oscar, please just give up and release your film next year. You just can’t compete with this. This is something else. It is like going to the moon, only if it were even more risky, more pointless, and only one crew captured it, in IMAX no less.
Judged on its cinematic merits, Everest: The Other Side is easily a 10/10. It is incredible. It should not exist, but it does. It is something to see — something wondrous and unsettling. So see it in IMAX, and be prepared. Just know it will leave you shaken. There’s nothing like it.
Everest: The Other Side had its Canadian premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
"…only the potatoes are broken human bones in a bag of skin…"
