Fact Check: Is the documentary Free Solo accurately portraying Alex Honnold's climb?

National Geographic's Free Solo is an accurate portrayal of Alex Honnold's 2017 solo climb of the 3,000-foot rock face of El Capitan, featuring realistic and meticulous cinematography that can only be achieved by elite rock climbers themselves.

For this 2018 documentary film, Jimmy Chin, who has been climbing and photographing climbs for decades, is the man behind the camera.

Chin hired a team of cameramen who are hard-core Yosemite climbers, and so he had a whole crew who were able to film Honnold's climb in accurate detail from different vantage points using 12 cameras, with 8 cameramen, and 2 remote cameras.

In a National Geographic feature, Chin details the filming logistics, which involved the crew speed climbing "easy" key spots along Honnold's route to lug camera equipment and climbing supplies before rappelling down and using jumars, a type of hand winch, to keep pace with Honnold.

In the climax of the film, when Alex finally gets around to making his climbing attempt, the film features tension-filled camerawork as he makes his way up the cliff across overhangs and exposed traverses. However, some parts of his climb are narrated using radio calls between Jimmy Chin and his crew of cameramen.

That said, the film is much an accurate portrayal of Honnold's character and the nervous disposition of the people around him as much as his actual climb, courtesy of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's attempt to draw an extensive character profile and story arc of the famed rock climber.

Between Honnold's death-defying climb and Chin and Vasarhelyi's cinematography, Free Solo won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019.

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What to know about Alex Honnold's climb in Free Solo

Alex Honnold, a headstrong adventurer, is the subject of the documentary film. He was the first ever to free solo a major route on the iconic El Capitan, which is a nearly 3,000-foot granite wall, without using ropes or any other safety gear, using only a perfected hand-by-hand, foot-by-foot choreography.

Dressed in his favored red t-shirt paired with cutoff nylon pants, Honnold started his historic rope-less climb of the El Capitan via the Freerider route at around 5:32 a.m. PDT on June 3, 2017, reaching the peak at around 9:28 a.m. PDT.

While Honnold's iconic free soloing is the main feature of the documentary, it also features the dilemma of his loved ones in the spotlight. There is his girlfriend Sanni who quietly supports him but would rather Honnold not risk his life.

Beyond the actual climb itself, the film also puts a lot of focus on the mental and emotional aspects of free soloing and Honnold's mental ability to control fear and his tolerance for scary situations. In one sequence, he was seen getting a brain scan in an attempt to understand or find out if his brain works differently than others.

The official film synopsis reads:

"From award-winning documentary filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi ("MERU") and world-renowned photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin comes National Geographic Documentary Film's FREE SOLO, a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of the free soloist climber Alex Honnold, as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream: climbing the face of the world's most famous rock...the 3,0000 ft El Capitan in Yosemite National Park...without a rope."

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Watch Free Solo now streaming on Disney+ with a subscription or rent on Apple TV and Prime Video.