Why Free Solo Still Sets the Standard for Adventure Documentaries
Years on from its release, the Oscar-winning film about Alex Honnold's ropeless ascent of El Capitan remains the benchmark against which the genre is measured.
By The ITSMOVIES Desk · August 5, 2026 · 4 min read
As a new generation of adventure documentaries competes for attention on streaming platforms, one film keeps resurfacing in the conversation: Free Solo, the 2018 documentary from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin that captured Alex Honnold's ropeless ascent of El Capitan.
The film follows Honnold as he prepares to climb the 3,000-foot granite wall in Yosemite National Park without any safety equipment — a feat many in the climbing world considered unthinkable. Just as compelling is the film's honesty about its own making: the filmmakers, themselves accomplished climbers, wrestle openly with the ethics of filming a friend attempting something that could kill him.
When Honnold completed the climb in under four hours, he achieved what is still regarded as one of the greatest feats in the history of the sport. The film's coverage of that ascent remains a masterclass in tension and restraint.
Free Solo won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, along with a BAFTA and multiple Emmys. Its enduring reputation — and the way newer releases are still compared to it — speaks to how completely it reset expectations for what an adventure documentary could achieve.
