Directors: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Natalie Hewit

This thrilling tale of exploration, derring-do and awe from the makers of ‘Free Solo’ charts the 1915 voyage of Ernest Shackleton’s ‘The Endurance’ to the South Pole, alongside the ‘Endurance 22’ expedition on the South African Icebreaker ‘S.A. Agulhas II’ to recover the wreck of the ship at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. For the 1915 passages, the makers skilfully marry digitally coloured archive footage to recreated diary readings via AI, utilising recordings of the writers’ voices from other sources. Dramatic recreations also feature but are edited in so seamlessly that it does not distract. Narratively the makers elegantly contrast and compare the 1915 and 1922 missions, drawing striking comparisons between the respective explorers, their ambitions and flaws. Shackleton himself comes across as an incomplete and restless man, eager for affirmation in whatever scheme he was currently fixated on. There are lovely tidbits on other crew members too, such as how New Zealander Captain Frank Arthur Worsley dreamt the night before he signed up that he was navigating icebergs around Burlington Street in Mayfair. Awe inspiring footage, much of it a lot of it drawn from the BFI restoration of documentary South: ‘Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Glorious Epic of the Antarctic’, beautifully compliments a stirring account of camaraderie and how Shackleton somehow kept his group alive a whole year after their ship became encased in ice.

David Willoughby

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