The Partnership: How Making ‘Nyad’ Employed The Documentarian Skills Of Chai Vasarhelyi And Jimmy Chin & Evolved Their Marriage Too
deadline.comEndurance and single-minded determination have been the focus of filmmaking duo Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin with their documentary films Free Solo, Meru and The Rescue, and now, with Nyad, they examine those themes in a narrative feature, with Annette Bening in the starring role of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, and Jodie Foster as her coach and best friend Bonnie Stoll.
Based on Nyad’s memoir, Find a Way, the film follows Nyad’s multiple attempts to make the 110-mile open ocean swim from Cuba to Florida, dodging sharks and dangerous jellyfish and weathering brutal waves.
When Nyad finally succeeds at the age of 64, her message is, “It’s never too late to follow your dream.” Here, Vasarhelyi and Chin look back on how their documentarian skills fed into recreating an epic seafaring experience, and how both their marriage and their working relationship evolved as a result. DEADLINE: How did you first connect to Diana Nyad’s story? CHAI VASARHELYI: I vividly remember when she did [the swim] in 2013.
I was eight and-a-half months pregnant with our daughter, and it was our first child. I was going through that phase where I was thinking, Britney Spears has three kids, how hard could it be?
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