Tenzing Retells the 1953 Everest Climb Through Sherpa Eyes
The man who first stood on top of the world finally gets top billing.
Tenzing is a drama, not a documentary, that dramatises the 1953 first successful climb to the summit of Mount Everest, according to Variety. It tells that ascent from the side of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa climber whose role was long understated.
The film stars Genden Phuntsok alongside Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe, according to Variety. It was selected to open the Zurich Film Festival, according to Variety.
The history behind it is brief and stark. After eight failed attempts to reach the summit, a British-led expedition succeeded in 1953. Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese-Indian Sherpa, were the first two people to stand on the summit.
Sherpa are a Tibetan ethnic group native to the Everest area. They served officially as guides on the 1953 climb, a job that covers route-finding, carrying loads and fixing ropes. In Norgay's case, his contribution was treated as that of Hillary's assistant, a framing linked to his ethnicity.
That imbalance is the engine of the film. In Tenzing, Norgay calls the mountain by its Tibetan name, Chomolungma. The story also reaches back to British alpinist George Mallory, played by Johnny Flynn, who took part in the first three Everest expeditions in the 1920s.
Behind the camera is Jennifer Peedom, an Australian film-maker who had spent 18 years making documentaries about mountain-climbing. She previously directed Solo and Sherpa, including the 2015 documentary Sherpa about Sherpa culture near Mount Everest.
The project has been in the works for some time. Hiddleston and Dafoe were cast in the Tenzing Norgay biopic in 2024, and Apple then acquired the Everest thriller starring Hiddleston, according to Variety. Reviews are now appearing, with RogerEbert.com describing it as an Everest climbing drama in a review published on 8 October 2026.
What makes this stand out is the shift in viewpoint. For general audiences, this means a familiar expedition tale told from the rope below the headlines, not from above them.
