Alex Honnold is a superhuman athlete, whose prowess ranks alongside icons like Usain Bolt, Cristiano Ronaldo and Serena Williams. He's also a dreamer who sets his heart on extreme feats: on June 3 2017 he climbed the 914m sheer wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, California, with no rope to protect him if he fell.
"On El Cap I was not really thinking about anything when I was climbing. For the most part I was just performing and that's why it was such an enjoyable experience," he said this week in an interview from London.
This "free solo" style of climbing demands perfection; any mistake would have been fatal for the climber with big hands and a wide smile.
Capturing his sublime climb on film demanded mastery of another kind, which feted filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi and world-class photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin have achieved in their documentary Free Solo.
A mesmerising and intimate record of Honnold's accomplishment, Free Solo won a Bafta (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award and it has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Honnold, 33, who mostly lives in a van and bought a suit especially for the premiere, said: "Chai brought that X-factor to the film. The team talked about wanting to elevate their craft to meet mine and I felt that reversed a bit, like I had to do them justice. The crew worked so hard to get into position to film the high climbing."
In Free Solo the talented couple speak about not wanting to put any pressure on Honnold and being sensitive to the space he needed on El Cap. "I totally trusted them," said Honnold. "I felt a sort of obligation, not a pressure to perform, but wanting to go up there and do my best."
Watching him move up the massive cliff, holding grips barely bigger than the edge of a coin, it is clear he was in a zone where every move flowed.
Honnold trained physically and mentally for more than a year - not relying only on his talent. His efforts were disrupted by falling in love and an ankle injury. Despite these unforeseen events, Honnold never wavered from his goal.
WATCH | The trailer for the award-winning documentary Free Solo..