Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an Academy Award winning filmmaker. Most recently Vasarhelyi directed and produced Free Solo. The film offers an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold, and was awarded a BAFTA and the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Vasarhelyi’s other films as a director include Meru (Oscars Shortlist 2016; Sundance Audience Award 2015); Incorruptible (Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit Award 2016); Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (Oscilloscope, 2009), which premiered at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals; A Normal Life (Tribeca Film Festival, Best Documentary 2003); and Touba (SXSW, Special Jury Prize Best Cinematography 2013). Vasarhelyi has directed two New York Times Op Docs, two episodes for Netflix’s nonfiction design series Abstract and two episodes for ESPN’s new nonfiction series Enhanced. She has received grants from the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bertha Britdoc, the William and Mary Greve Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a member of the DGA as well as AMPAS. She holds a B.A. in comparative literature from Princeton University and splits her time between New York City and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with her husband Jimmy Chin, their daughter, Marina, and son, James.