How ‘Wild Life’ Protagonist Kris Tompkins Overcame Grief To Accomplish Something Incredible For The Planet
deadline.comThe filmmaking couple Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have earned a reputation for making documentaries about people who accomplish the unthinkable – the no-ropes climber Alex Honnold in the Oscar-winning Free Solo, or the divers of The Rescue who, against all odds, saved a group of Thai kids stranded in a flooded cave.
As it happens, the heroes of their best-known films have been men, but in their latest documentary, Wild Life, the focus shifts in large part to a woman, the conservationist and former Patagonia CEO Kris Tompkins. “It was really nice to make a film where there’s a woman at the center,” Vasarhelyi remarked at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, where the film screened last month.
Wild Life, from National Geographic and Picturehouse, just expanded to theaters in Southern California, including Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Bay area after opening in New York and DC last weekend.
The documentary tells the love story of Kris and her late husband Doug Tompkins, founder of The North Face and co-founder of retailer Esprit.
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