First All-Black Everest Team Races Against Time in New Documentary [Exclusive]

The tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, has long represented the ultimate goal for mountaineers and human perseverance against nature. Recently, an all-Black climbing team took to the summit of the forbidding peak — and a film crew was there to capture it all. Collider is proud to present an exclusive sneak peek of Full Circle: The First All-Black Everest Ascent, the new documentary about the climb that premieres at this month’s Tribeca Film Festival.

In our sneak peek, the climbers are advised by their Sherpa guide that they are in a race against time and must cross a treacherous icefall composed of seracs (huge blocks of glacial ice). Seracs are highly unstable; an ice avalanche triggered by collapsing seracs killed 16 Sherpas in 2014, one of the deadliest disasters in Everest history. The clip shows off the fatal beauty of Everest; the climbers are surrounded by frigid, unearthly splendor as they traverse the seracs, knowing that one wrong step — or even the right one — might send them plummeting to their doom. The film made its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday; there will be additional screenings on June 10 and June 14. Go to TribecaFilm.com for showtimes and tickets.































































Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

Parasite

Everything Everywhere

Oppenheimer

Birdman

No Country for Old Men

01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

What Do the Filmmakers Have to Say About ‘Full Circle: The First All-Black Everest Ascent’?

Collider also had the privilege of speaking with directors Justice A. Whitaker and Rolake Bamgbose about the film, which documents “both the physical demands of the climb and the deeply personal journeys of the climbers” as they made their ascent of the Himalayan peak in 2022. They describe the expedition as “as much a spiritual pilgrimage as it is an athletic feat as climbers reach their breaking point, reckon between their limits and their dreams, some of them reaching a summit that represents something far greater than personal achievement.” Making the film was deeply personal to Whitaker, who shared a deep connection to one of the expedition members:

“I have shared a brotherhood with Full Circle Expedition member Demond ‘Dom’ Mullins for over fifteen years. His experience of exploring the outdoors as a means to heal his PTSD has always been close to home for me as the son of a Vietnam War combat veteran. When Dom was asked to join the Full Circle Expedition it was clear that this expedition would be the perfect match for our shared goal of illuminating how the outdoors can be a space of healing and growth for Black people.”

While Bamgbose is a veteran documentarian, having produced films for ESPN, PBS, and the New York Times, the story of Full Circle felt “supremely special.” She was quick to distinguish it from the burgeoning genre of climbing documentaries, including Free Solo and Touching the Void: “Full Circle is not just a “climbing” film about a group of individuals who want to make headlines, but rather a story about overcoming obstacles, achieving dreams and finding personal freedom — while advancing the culture of a sport that paves the way to one of the most revered achievements in the world.”

Mount Everest has long been an interesting subject for documentary filmmakers. A few narrative films have also been made about the peak, including the 2015 Jake Gyllenhaal movie Everest; it dramatized one of the mountain’s worst disasters, the 1996 blizzard that killed 8 climbers. Full Circle: The First All-Black Everest Ascent premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, with screenings on June 10 and June 14. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

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