The Footage In Netflix's Skywalkers: A Love Story Documentary Trailer Will Give You A Heart Attack

For me, the best documentaries plunge the audience into a subculture we don't know anything about and immerse us in that world for a couple of hours. For one of the most extreme versions of this, check out David Farrier's "Tickled." But Jeff Zimbalist's newest film, "Skywalkers: A Love Story," debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and is another great example of a doc that accomplishes that goal, and it's extreme in a totally different way. This film utilizes jaw-dropping footage of two Russian "rooftoppers" named Angela Nikolau and Ivan "Vanya" Beerkus as they illegally break into skyscrapers and other ludicrously tall buildings, find their way onto the roof or towering construction cranes, and pose for photos and videos, racking up tons of social media clout in the process. Along the way, the duo, who were once rivals in the rooftopping scene, strike up a relationship and fall in love, teaming up for increasingly ambitious climbs in cities around the world and culminating with an attempt to scale Merdeka, a 118-story building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that Angela calls "the last super-skyscraper on the planet."

The film follows many of the same beats as a heist movie, showing the protagonists scouting and researching the building, training for their ultimate mission, trying to execute their plan, and then scrambling to adjust on the fly when things inevitably go wrong. And all the while, the footage — frequently captured by GoPros worn by the climbers themselves — puts you up in those dizzying heights, right there with these lovers as an errant gust of wind or the tiniest misstep could cause them to plummet to their deaths.

As you can read in my full review from Sundance, I have some serious ethical qualms with the subjects of this movie and their approach to what they refer to as their art, especially when you compare this movie to another recent climbing doc, 2018's Oscar-winning "Free Solo." But despite those qualms, I can't deny that the footage on display here is un-friggin'-believable, and just like with "Free Solo," my palms were literally sweating and I had an elevated heart rate during certain moments in this movie. Without spoiling anything too specific, I'll just say that the movie has a scene where the fatal stakes of these climbs are laid out extremely clearly, and the effect on the protagonists is palpable. Their love story, which is the true center of the film, is so wrapped up in their passion and profession, and watching their bond be challenged by their ever-growing ambition is another part of the draw of the movie. But hot damn, that incredible footage is the biggest selling point, and when Netflix users see screenshots or a trailer of this plastered across their home screens, I have to imagine a lot of folks will be curious enough to check this out for themselves.

The movie, which took seven years to make, hits Netflix on July 19, 2024, and XYZ Films will be releasing the movie in select IMAX theatres for one week only, starting July 12, 2024.