Oprah Winfrey Moderates Telluride Q&A for 'Everest: The Other Side,' the Oscar-Winning Directors' New Documentary
Oprah Winfrey took the stage at the Telluride Film Festival on September 5, 2026, to moderate a conversation with climber Jim Morrison after the North American premiere of the documentary Everest: The Other Side (Deadline).
The National Geographic film, directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, chronicles Morrison's bid to become the first person to scale Everest's north side and ski back down it. Vasarhelyi and Chin won an Academy Award for their 2018 mountaineering documentary Free Solo, which followed Alex Honnold's rope-free ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite. Chin was part of the small team that climbed alongside Morrison on Everest, filming across multiple attempts — failures included — before the successful descent (Deadline).
The project took almost six years to complete, Vasarhelyi told the Telluride audience. The film is described as an intimate portrait of two elite ski mountaineers bound by love and their shared pursuit of the goal — Morrison and his climbing partner, Hilaree Nelson (The Futon Critic). Nelson was killed in 2022 on a mountaineering trip to Nepal's Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain in the world. Before meeting Nelson, Morrison had endured another devastating loss: his wife and two young children died in a plane crash (Deadline).
Winfrey said during the Q&A that she has urged Morrison to write a book about his life and experiences (Deadline).
The festival run for Everest: The Other Side has been extensive. The film held its world premiere at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival before arriving at Telluride (The Futon Critic). It also screens at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it made its Canadian premiere, as well as the Camden and BFI London film festivals (The Playlist; TIFF). The film runs 115 minutes and is a US production in English (TIFF).
National Geographic released a trailer ahead of the festival circuit (The Playlist). The film reaches cinemas on October 30, 2026 (The Playlist).
For a documentary about extreme mountaineering, the emotional weight sits as heavily as the altitude. Morrison's story layers athletic ambition atop unthinkable personal loss, and Vasarhelyi and Chin — who have built their careers on filming athletes at the edge of what is possible — spent nearly six years shaping it. Winfrey's involvement at Telluride signals that the film's appeal reaches well beyond the climbing community.
