Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are the directors of the documentary, Wild Life. The film follows conservationist Chris Tompkins through an epic love story spanning decades. This is as wild as the landscape she has spent her life protecting.
After falling in love in mid-life, Kris, and an outdoorsman and entrepreneur Doug Tompkins left the world of highly successful outdoor brands such as Patagonia, The North Face and Esprit behind to turn their attention to the visionary endeavor of creating a national park throughout Chile and Argentina. Wild Life chronicles the ups and downs of the journey to make the largest private land donation in history.
On Sunday, March 12, the Academy Awards took place at the same time as Vasarhelyi was at his SXSW premiere. He told media news outlet Deadline how he ran home to watch the most important night in film. He said, “I think it’s the first time our crew ever saw me run, which was from our screening to the Oscar viewing… I’m really proud of everyone who won [Sunday] night. Everything Everywhere All at Once, we watched it while we were shooting our first fiction film, we were in the Dominican Republic. And it’s great to see another Asian face up there. And also this idea of everyone thanking their mothers [in acceptance speeches], I appreciate that.”
For Chin, it reminded him of when he won alongside Chai for their documentary film, Free Solo. Chin said: “I felt like this was one of the great untold stories of our time. It’s an extraordinary love story between two people, but it’s also a love story about our planet on so many levels. These were the… original dirt bag climbers and skiers and surfers that really defined a way of life and a culture and an era. But they were also extraordinary entrepreneurs that went on to do something that has never been done before, which falls in line with the stories that we love to tell — people achieving the impossible. And what they achieved in conservation is something that we’ve never seen before, the biggest private land donation in the history of mankind”
This is the first time in Academy Award history that someone from Asian descent won in the Leading Actress category.
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