TIFF REVIEW: BY KURT MORRISON

SEPTEMBER 11, 2026

4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

I chose a different path this year to kick off my 6th round at the Toronto International Film Festival - not vying for a hard foreign drama like last year's Sentimental Value or a piece of Canadiana like 2024's The Shrouds from director David Cronenberg.

Instead, I submerged myself into National Geographic's latest two hour long documentary directed by the Oscar winning husband and wife Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who rose to fame with their anxiety-inducing IMAX project Free Solo, which too premiered at TIFF’18.

Everest: The Other Side focuses on professional ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, and their rock solid (pun intended) marriage that has grown sturdier and sturdier with each successful summit of the world's most hellacious mountainscapes. We meet the pair as they prepare to summit Mount Everest for the first time since 2018, whilst still juggling home life with their two boys. The first half hour of the film very much focuses on Hilaree, and acts as both quasi-autobiographical along with insight into why she and her husband, Jim Morrison, are drawn to taking such risks.

As the years progress on, the two find themselves at a crossroads, wanting to scale the Chinese border of the world's tallest mountain, Mount Everest. The documentary does a phenomenal job at explaining the differences in routes, and how different scaling the northern Tibet side is compared to the southern Nepal side. These details felt crucial as I continued to watch the documentary, as the task on paper is laid out methodically but the physicality and unexpected environmental challenges are what take the biggest toll on the husband and wife.

I hate to even compare this to 2018's Free Solo but I think things need to be addressed and applauded. It is worth mentioning that directors Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi are very good friends with their subjects and are far more attentive to make this a very human documentary than Free Solo was. There are moments here in Everest that carry weight and human connection within it, grounding it with a very looming sense of fear from Morrison and Nelson, which helps to pack a far more emotional approach to such a grandiose story.

And by using the verbage grandiose, I cannot begin to describe how beautiful this film looks on a massive IMAX screen. In a year where the names of Nolan and Villeneuve have dominated the IMAX conversation, the cinematography and scope used to create this documentary are some of the most beautiful images I have ever seen on an IMAX screen. Don't get me wrong - I am a HUGE critic of films and their sometimes unnecessary use of IMAX screens, but this... this was on a whole other level of spectacle and awe.

Everest: The Other Side needs to be in the conversation for the best documentary of 2026. It's a story of tragedy and triumph that packed a lot more of an emotional punch then I ever expected it to and is easily the best TIFF documentary I've seen here in years. Opening October 30th nationwide, I urge you to check this one out on the big screen.