Join Asia Society for a special advance screening of Everest: The Other Side, the new documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, ahead of its theatrical release.
The film follows elite ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson as they pursue an extraordinary shared dream: to climb and ski the direct North Face of Mount Everest, one of the mountain’s most difficult and dangerous routes. Capturing both the breathtaking scale of the expedition and the deeply personal story behind it, Everest: The Other Side is a story of love, ambition, resilience, and the pursuit of the seemingly impossible.
Following the screening, join Academy Award-winning filmmakers, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, elite ski mountaineer Jim Morrison and Emmy and Golden Globe-winning producer and three-term President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Janet Yang for a conversation with Jing Qian, Vice President of Asia Society and Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Center for China Analysis.
Speakers
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an Academy® Award-winning filmmaker with a storied history of critically acclaimed films. In 2019, she, along with co-director and co-producer Jimmy Chin, was awarded the Academy® Award and a BAFTA for Best Documentary Feature for “Free Solo,” an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold. The film also received seven primetime Emmy® Awards. In 2023, she co-directed her first scripted feature, “Nyad” for NETFLIX, which saw both stars Annette Bening and Jodie Foster receive Academy Award nominations. More recently, she directed and produced “Love+War” for National Geographic Documentary Films, about acclaimed war photographer Lynsey Addario, and “Lost in the Jungle,” the incredible true story of four children who survived a plane crash in the Colombian jungle. The latter film won the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary Emmy for 2025. In 2021, she co-directed the BAFTA and DGA-nominated documentary “The Rescue,” chronicling the enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand. Other projects include “Return to Space”, about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the Top 10 on Netflix’s most-watched films list, and the series “Edge of the Unknown” for National Geographic. Vasarhelyi was also honored with a Peabody and a News & Documentary Emmy Award for co-directing and producing the acclaimed National Geographic series “Photographer.” Her feature “Meru” won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and was on the 2016 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. Vasarhelyi’s other films as a director include “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 in 2013). Vasarhelyi has directed two New York Times Op Docs, two episodes of Netflix’s nonfiction design series “Abstract” and two episodes of ESPN’s nonfiction series “Enhanced.” She has received grants from the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bertha Britdoc and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a member of the DGA, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and she holds a bachelor’s in comparative literature from Princeton University. Vasarhelyi lives in New York City with her children, daughter, Marina, and son, James.
Jimmy Chin is an Academy Award-winning director, New York Times best-selling author and National Geographic photographer. He has been an active professional climber and skier on The North Face Athlete team for over 25 years. He has led cutting-edge climbing and mountaineering expeditions around the world. Jimmy has made difficult first ascents in some of the most remote mountain ranges on the planet – from frozen big walls in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan and Queen Maud Land in Antarctica, to the towers of the Ennedi Desert in Chad Africa. In 2006 he achieved the first successful American ski descent from the summit of Mount Everest with Kit and Rob DesLauriers. Five years later, Jimmy, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk captured the coveted first ascent of the notorious Shark’s Fin, a granite wall on India’s Meru Central. As a photographer, Jimmy's work has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Outside Magazine and others. Jimmy has won numerous awards for his photography including National Geographic’s prestigious Photographers’ Photographer Award. His first book of photography, “There and Back,” became a New York Times Bestseller in 2021. Along with co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy produced and directed “Free Solo,” an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold. “Free Solo” won 7 Primetime Emmys, a BAFTA, and the Academy® Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019. His first film, “Meru,” won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2015 and made the 2016 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. More recently, Jimmy co-directed and co-produced for National Geographic Documentary Films “Love+War,” about acclaimed war photographer Lynsey Addario, and “Lost in the Jungle,” about the incredible true story of four children who survived a plane crash in the Colombian jungle, which won the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary Emmy in 2025. His other projects include National Geographic’s DGA-nominated and Emmy winning documentary “The Rescue,” chronicling the against-all-odds rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand; “Wild Life,” a sweeping portrait of conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins chronicling their fight to preserve wild land in Chile and Argentina; “Return to Space,” about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the Top 10 on Netflix’s most-watched films list, and two series for National Geographic: “Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin” and “Photographer,” which won a Peabody and has three News & Doc Emmy nominations. Jimmy’s first scripted feature, “Nyad”, about Diana Nyad's 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, began streaming on Netflix in the fall of 2023 and garnered Academy® Award, Golden Globe®, and SAG nominations, for both stars, Jodie Foster and Annette Bening. Jimmy lives in Jackson, Wyoming, and New York City with his daughter, Marina, and son, James.
Janet Yang
An Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Hollywood producer, Yang recently completed three one-year terms as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She is the first Asian American to hold this position. In 2025, she became a founding partner of First Light StoryHouse, a new venture with Miky Lee of CJ Entertainment and Dominic Ng of East West Bank. In 2026, she was elected Chair of the Board of Governors of Committee of 100.
Yang rose to prominence through her collaboration with Steven Spielberg on “Empire of the Sun”, followed by a long partnership with multiple Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone where she served as Executive Producer on the iconic "The Joy Luck Club", and as a Producer on the Golden Globe-winning "The People vs. Larry Flynt".
Most recently, Yang was an Executive Producer on the 2025 Tribeca Audience-award winning documentary "The Rose: Come Back To Me," the Sundance award-winning narrative feature “Take Me Home,” and the Oscar-nominated animated film “Over the Moon.” Her other works include "Dark Matter" (Sundance winner) with Meryl Streep, "The Weight of Water" (Lionsgate) directed by Kathryn Bigelow with Sean Penn, "High Crimes" (Fox) with Morgan Freeman, and cult favorites "Zero Effect" (Jake Kasdan) and "Shanghai Calling" (China Film Group).
Yang was named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Hollywood" by The Hollywood Reporter, included in Variety's "Power of Women," and was featured on the Forbes "50 over 50" List. She is a co-founder of GoldHouse, serves on the board of IMAX China, Forbes APEX, and Asia Society Southern California’s Advisory Council, where she founded the Asian Women Empowered (AWE) Program. Yang is currently a Presidential Fellow at Loyola Marymount University.
Jim Morrison is one of the preeminent ski-mountaineers of his generation, known for technical first descents on some of the world's most formidable peaks. Named National Geographic's Adventurer of the Year in 2018, he has spent his career pursuing lines in the high mountains long considered un-skiable. In October 2025, Jim became the first person to ski Mount Everest's North Face, completing a 12,000-foot descent through the Hornbein Couloir. The achievement represented the culmination of years of preparation and stands as one of the most significant milestones in the history of high-altitude skiing. His Everest descent followed a career already marked by landmark accomplishments. In 2018, Jim and his late partner Hilaree Nelson completed the first ski descent from the summit of Lhotse, the world's fourth-highest mountain — a 7,000-vertical-foot descent widely regarded as one of the most significant achievements in the sport's history. In 2024, he completed the first ski descent of Pakistan's Great Trango Tower alongside Chantel Astorga and Christina Lustenberger. From Ecuador to Russia to the 8,000-meter giants of the Himalaya, Jim's first ski descents of Papsura Peak and Cho Oyu further distinguish him as one of the sport's foremost pioneers.
Jing Qian (moderator) is Vice President of the Asia Society and Managing Director of its Center for China Analysis (CCA), which he co-founded with the Hon. Dr. Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia. As the Managing Director of CCA, Jing leads its strategy, research, and policy work on China, which includes coordination of a series of Track 1.5/2 dialogues. Jing also co-leads the Decoding Chinese Politics, Cure4Cancer International Clinical Trials Collaboration projects, and the Dragon & Eagle: U.S.-China Rising Leaders Council. Jing serves as an Advisory Board Member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum and is a co-founder of the Bloomberg New Economy International Cancer Coalition and a founding member of the AstraZeneca Global Health Equity Advisory Board. Jing is also a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Jing’s own research is focused on China's elite politics and its impact on China's domestic and foreign policy, particularly regarding U.S.-China relations. His analyses have appeared in Bloomberg, BBC, CBC, Harvard Business Review, Nature, Nature Medicine, The New York Times, South China Morning Post, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, etc. A graduate of Harvard, Jing is deeply interested in the liberal arts. He co-founded Project Agora, with H.E. George Papandreou, aiming to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society through the transformative power of a liberal arts education.
Everest: The Other Side — Special Advance Screening and Conversation
Host
Sun, Oct 25, 06:30 PM - 09:00 PM (EDT)
To be shared on approval (New York)
30 attendees
Join Asia Society for a special advance screening of Everest: The Other Side, the new documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, ahead of its theatrical release.
The film follows elite ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson as they pursue an extraordinary shared dream: to climb and ski the direct North Face of Mount Everest, one of the mountain’s most difficult and dangerous routes. Capturing both the breathtaking scale of the expedition and the deeply personal story behind it, Everest: The Other Side is a story of love, ambition, resilience, and the pursuit of the seemingly impossible.
Following the screening, join Academy Award-winning filmmakers, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, elite ski mountaineer Jim Morrison and Emmy and Golden Globe-winning producer and three-term President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Janet Yang for a conversation with Jing Qian, Vice President of Asia Society and Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Center for China Analysis.
Speakers
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an Academy® Award-winning filmmaker with a storied history of critically acclaimed films. In 2019, she, along with co-director and co-producer Jimmy Chin, was awarded the Academy® Award and a BAFTA for Best Documentary Feature for “Free Solo,” an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold. The film also received seven primetime Emmy® Awards. In 2023, she co-directed her first scripted feature, “Nyad” for NETFLIX, which saw both stars Annette Bening and Jodie Foster receive Academy Award nominations. More recently, she directed and produced “Love+War” for National Geographic Documentary Films, about acclaimed war photographer Lynsey Addario, and “Lost in the Jungle,” the incredible true story of four children who survived a plane crash in the Colombian jungle. The latter film won the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary Emmy for 2025. In 2021, she co-directed the BAFTA and DGA-nominated documentary “The Rescue,” chronicling the enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand. Other projects include “Return to Space”, about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the Top 10 on Netflix’s most-watched films list, and the series “Edge of the Unknown” for National Geographic. Vasarhelyi was also honored with a Peabody and a News & Documentary Emmy Award for co-directing and producing the acclaimed National Geographic series “Photographer.” Her feature “Meru” won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and was on the 2016 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. Vasarhelyi’s other films as a director include “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 in 2013). Vasarhelyi has directed two New York Times Op Docs, two episodes of Netflix’s nonfiction design series “Abstract” and two episodes of ESPN’s nonfiction series “Enhanced.” She has received grants from the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bertha Britdoc and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a member of the DGA, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and she holds a bachelor’s in comparative literature from Princeton University. Vasarhelyi lives in New York City with her children, daughter, Marina, and son, James.
Jimmy Chin is an Academy Award-winning director, New York Times best-selling author and National Geographic photographer. He has been an active professional climber and skier on The North Face Athlete team for over 25 years. He has led cutting-edge climbing and mountaineering expeditions around the world. Jimmy has made difficult first ascents in some of the most remote mountain ranges on the planet – from frozen big walls in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan and Queen Maud Land in Antarctica, to the towers of the Ennedi Desert in Chad Africa. In 2006 he achieved the first successful American ski descent from the summit of Mount Everest with Kit and Rob DesLauriers. Five years later, Jimmy, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk captured the coveted first ascent of the notorious Shark’s Fin, a granite wall on India’s Meru Central. As a photographer, Jimmy's work has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Outside Magazine and others. Jimmy has won numerous awards for his photography including National Geographic’s prestigious Photographers’ Photographer Award. His first book of photography, “There and Back,” became a New York Times Bestseller in 2021. Along with co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy produced and directed “Free Solo,” an intimate, unflinching portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold. “Free Solo” won 7 Primetime Emmys, a BAFTA, and the Academy® Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019. His first film, “Meru,” won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2015 and made the 2016 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. More recently, Jimmy co-directed and co-produced for National Geographic Documentary Films “Love+War,” about acclaimed war photographer Lynsey Addario, and “Lost in the Jungle,” about the incredible true story of four children who survived a plane crash in the Colombian jungle, which won the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary Emmy in 2025. His other projects include National Geographic’s DGA-nominated and Emmy winning documentary “The Rescue,” chronicling the against-all-odds rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand; “Wild Life,” a sweeping portrait of conservationists Kris and Doug Tompkins chronicling their fight to preserve wild land in Chile and Argentina; “Return to Space,” about SpaceX and NASA’s first joint spaceflight, which hit the Top 10 on Netflix’s most-watched films list, and two series for National Geographic: “Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin” and “Photographer,” which won a Peabody and has three News & Doc Emmy nominations. Jimmy’s first scripted feature, “Nyad”, about Diana Nyad's 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, began streaming on Netflix in the fall of 2023 and garnered Academy® Award, Golden Globe®, and SAG nominations, for both stars, Jodie Foster and Annette Bening. Jimmy lives in Jackson, Wyoming, and New York City with his daughter, Marina, and son, James.
Janet Yang
An Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Hollywood producer, Yang recently completed three one-year terms as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She is the first Asian American to hold this position. In 2025, she became a founding partner of First Light StoryHouse, a new venture with Miky Lee of CJ Entertainment and Dominic Ng of East West Bank. In 2026, she was elected Chair of the Board of Governors of Committee of 100.
Yang rose to prominence through her collaboration with Steven Spielberg on “Empire of the Sun”, followed by a long partnership with multiple Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone where she served as Executive Producer on the iconic "The Joy Luck Club", and as a Producer on the Golden Globe-winning "The People vs. Larry Flynt".
Most recently, Yang was an Executive Producer on the 2025 Tribeca Audience-award winning documentary "The Rose: Come Back To Me," the Sundance award-winning narrative feature “Take Me Home,” and the Oscar-nominated animated film “Over the Moon.” Her other works include "Dark Matter" (Sundance winner) with Meryl Streep, "The Weight of Water" (Lionsgate) directed by Kathryn Bigelow with Sean Penn, "High Crimes" (Fox) with Morgan Freeman, and cult favorites "Zero Effect" (Jake Kasdan) and "Shanghai Calling" (China Film Group).
Yang was named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Hollywood" by The Hollywood Reporter, included in Variety's "Power of Women," and was featured on the Forbes "50 over 50" List. She is a co-founder of GoldHouse, serves on the board of IMAX China, Forbes APEX, and Asia Society Southern California’s Advisory Council, where she founded the Asian Women Empowered (AWE) Program. Yang is currently a Presidential Fellow at Loyola Marymount University.
Jim Morrison is one of the preeminent ski-mountaineers of his generation, known for technical first descents on some of the world's most formidable peaks. Named National Geographic's Adventurer of the Year in 2018, he has spent his career pursuing lines in the high mountains long considered un-skiable. In October 2025, Jim became the first person to ski Mount Everest's North Face, completing a 12,000-foot descent through the Hornbein Couloir. The achievement represented the culmination of years of preparation and stands as one of the most significant milestones in the history of high-altitude skiing. His Everest descent followed a career already marked by landmark accomplishments. In 2018, Jim and his late partner Hilaree Nelson completed the first ski descent from the summit of Lhotse, the world's fourth-highest mountain — a 7,000-vertical-foot descent widely regarded as one of the most significant achievements in the sport's history. In 2024, he completed the first ski descent of Pakistan's Great Trango Tower alongside Chantel Astorga and Christina Lustenberger. From Ecuador to Russia to the 8,000-meter giants of the Himalaya, Jim's first ski descents of Papsura Peak and Cho Oyu further distinguish him as one of the sport's foremost pioneers.
Jing Qian (moderator) is Vice President of the Asia Society and Managing Director of its Center for China Analysis (CCA), which he co-founded with the Hon. Dr. Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia. As the Managing Director of CCA, Jing leads its strategy, research, and policy work on China, which includes coordination of a series of Track 1.5/2 dialogues. Jing also co-leads the Decoding Chinese Politics, Cure4Cancer International Clinical Trials Collaboration projects, and the Dragon & Eagle: U.S.-China Rising Leaders Council. Jing serves as an Advisory Board Member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum and is a co-founder of the Bloomberg New Economy International Cancer Coalition and a founding member of the AstraZeneca Global Health Equity Advisory Board. Jing is also a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Jing’s own research is focused on China's elite politics and its impact on China's domestic and foreign policy, particularly regarding U.S.-China relations. His analyses have appeared in Bloomberg, BBC, CBC, Harvard Business Review, Nature, Nature Medicine, The New York Times, South China Morning Post, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, etc. A graduate of Harvard, Jing is deeply interested in the liberal arts. He co-founded Project Agora, with H.E. George Papandreou, aiming to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society through the transformative power of a liberal arts education.