Jennifer Peedom Discusses Tenzing at Deadline's Contenders Los Angeles

Director Jennifer Peedom spoke about her film Tenzing on a panel for the picture at Deadline's Contenders Los Angeles event, Deadline reported on 14 November 2026.

The film tells the story of Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa who climbed Mount Everest alongside Sir Edmund Hillary. The two men reached the summit of the world's highest mountain in May 1953. Sherpas are an ethnic group from the Himalayas, and many of them have worked for generations as guides and porters on Everest expeditions.

Peedom knows the mountain from the inside. Deadline reports that she worked as a climbing camera operator on Everest expeditions before she became a director. Her 2015 feature documentary Sherpa followed an Everest expedition from the Sherpas' point of view, rather than from the climbers' side.

That earlier film is the connection to Tenzing. Both put the people who carry the load on the mountain at the centre of the story. Peedom's panel appearance is part of Contenders, Deadline's awards-season event series, where films and their filmmakers meet industry voters and press.

For readers who do not follow film, the panel is a chance for a director to explain a project in her own words, usually weeks or months before audiences see it.