Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi was born on December 30, 1978, in New York City, New York. She is the daughter of Marina Vasarhelyi, a college administrator, and Miklós Vásárhelyi, a college professor. Her father is a Hungarian-born Brazilian and her mother is from Hong Kong. Vasarhelyi graduated from The Brearley School and holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. Her career in filmmaking began early, with her first film, “A Normal Life,” winning Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2003. This film, which she started working on during her junior year of college, explored the lives of young journalists and activists in Kosovo after the war, focusing on their efforts to bring about change and recover from trauma. She worked as an assistant to director Mike Nichols on the film “Closer” in 2004 and collaborated with cinematographer Scott Duncan to document events like the Dakar Rally.

Vasarhelyi’s directorial work expanded with “Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love,” released in 2008, which premiered at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals and received multiple awards, including the Special Jury Prize at the Middle East International Film Festival. She spent five years working on this project, including moving to Africa for production. Her film “Touba,” documenting the annual Mouride pilgrimage in Senegal, won the Special Jury Prize for Best Cinematography at SXSW in 2013. “Incorruptible,” a documentary about Senegalese democracy, secured the Independent Spirit Truer Than Fiction Award in 2015. Her focus on extreme sports, often in collaboration with her husband Jimmy Chin, began to yield significant recognition. Their 2015 film “Meru” was shortlisted for the Oscars in 2016 and won the Sundance Audience Award.

The collaboration with Jimmy Chin continued to garner international acclaim, reaching a peak with “Free Solo” in 2018. This intimate portrayal of Alex Honnold’s free solo climb of El Capitan earned the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and both a BAFTA Award and an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing For A Documentary/Nonfiction Program for “Free Solo” and an Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media within an Unscripted Program for “Free Solo: 360.” Their more recent projects include “The Rescue” (2021), for which she won the Critics’ Choice Documentary Award for Best Director, “Return to Space” (2022), “Wild Life” (2023), and their first scripted film, “Nyad” (2023), which dramatized Diana Nyad’s historic swim. Vasarhelyi continues to produce and direct compelling narratives, with several projects currently in production or pre-production, including “From the Edge,” “Everest North,” and “Bartali.” She received a Peabody Award in 2024 for “Photographer.”