Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Chai Vasarhelyi is an Academy® Award-winning filmmaker. Free Solo, an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold she made with her husband Jimmy Chin, won a BAFTA, seven Emmy awards, and the Academy® Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019. Their first film together, Meru, won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2015 and was on the 2016 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature.

More recently, they directed and produced Wild Life, A sweeping portrait of conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins chronicling their fight to preserve wild land in Chile and Argentina. Other projects include National Geographic’s DGA-nominated and Emmy winning documentary The Rescue, chronicling the against-all-odds rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand, Return to Space, about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the top 10 on Netflix’s most watched films list, and two series for National Geographic: “Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin” and “Photographer.”

Their first scripted feature, Nyad, about Diana Nyad's 110 mile swim from Cuba to Florida, began streaming on Netflix in the fall of 2023 and garnered Academy® Award, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations, for both stars Jodie Foster and Annette Bening.

Vasarhelyi’s other films as a director include Incorruptible (Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award 2016); Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love, A Normal Life (Tribeca Film Festival, Best Documentary 2003); and Touba (SXSW, Jury Prize Best Cinematography 2013). Vasarhelyi is a member of the DGA, AMPAS, and holds a B.A. in comparative literature from Princeton University.

She and her husband live between New York City and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Together, they have two children, James and Marina.