I was surprised when I heard that after winning an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, the husband and wife team of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin were taking on a biographical sport drama film based on swimmer Diana Nyad’s many attempts to swim the Straights of Florida. Starring Annette Bening as Nyad, and Jodie Foster as her former partner, Bonnie Stoll, the film received two Oscar nods for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, but that’s largely due to the understanding and skill the directors have with intimately knowing people pushed to extreme feats of survival.

The film covers the period between 2010 and 2013, when a 60-year-old Diana Nyad decides that she wants to attempt the 110-mile nonstop swim from Cuba to Florida, something that she had tried when she was in her thirties. Her best friend and former business partner, Bonnie Stoll, comes on board to train her. Diana relocates to Key West with Bonnie where she trains, hiring navigator John Bartlett to accompany her. There are shark in those waters and while others swam with a shark cage, Diana swims with a shark repellant electronic device.

The first attempt (August 2011) doesn’t go well, for her or her lead medic. Both are incapacitated by a box jellyfish sting. Nyad consults with a box jellyfish expert. On her next attempt, she wears a specially designed suit to protect her, but the August 2012 attempt also fails due to bad weather conditions (thunder storm).

Of course, Nyad will finally succeed, and the film leaves no doubt about this.

What the directors do give us in their narrative feature film debut is the understanding of the psychology of people facing extreme and often unnecessary physical conditions. Chin is a professional mountain athlete who with Conrad Anger and Renan Ozturk scaled the granite wall on India’s Meru Peak called the “Shark’s Fin” that the two directed a documentary on in 2015. The two won an Oscar for their 2018 “Free Solo,” a documentary about the first-ever free solo climb of a route on Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan by rock climber Alex Honnold in June 2017.  In 2021, they directed and produced a documentary about the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue. As a team, Vasarhelyi and Chin know how to get the angles, the right lighting and bring us into the experience, and, in this case, make is seem as real as a documentary.

Julia Cox’s screenplay is based on Nyad’s own account, “Find a Way,” and while it touches on difficult subjects like the sexual abuse Nyad allegedly suffered from her childhood swimming coach Jack Nelson and the strain the multiple attempts had on the relationships with her crew, the script doesn’t delve into criticism of Nyad. According to an article on OpenSwimming.com,  Guinness World Records “no longer recognized Nyad’s swim as record-breaking.” There is a World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA), an international association for the organization, promotion and recognition of open water swimming, events and coaching. WOWSA made an announcement on 21 August 2023, to not that Nyad’s book “has not been rigorously fact-checked” and although Steven Munatones, who is a former owner and founder of WOWSA, was a consultant for the screenplay, he has also been promoter/blogger and his shifting roles have contributed to a decade-long controversy about Nyad’s swim.

After her arrival at Smathers Beach in Key West, Florida, Nyad declared her record in a press conference. She improvised rules, was engulfed in media attention, and finally wrote a book with inconsistencies. She later came to the realization that her swim lacked official ratification. Munatones redirected her towards the Halls of Fame, which don’t ratify swims. As it stands, her swim remains unratified.

Promises made by both Nyad and Munatones in a 2013 press conference to release observer logs and GPS data went unfulfilled. The comprehensive details of the swim only surfaced with the 2022 Nyad report. A significant gap in the records, particularly during a period when Nyad’s condition shifted dramatically, calls for further expert analysis.

While the film “Nyad” fails to question Nyad and the truth of her accomplishments, directors Vasarhelyi and Chin drive both Bening and Foster to brave and unglamorous portrayals. Even though both are White, by their age,–Bening, 65 and Foster 61 they both are considered underrepresented in movies, making this film about a different kind of diversity, one that is not racially based. For women and others, this film is also inspirational as the on-screen Nyad declares to the press after reaching the shore of Key West, “One, never, ever give up. Two, you’re never too old to chase your dreams. And three, it may look like a solitary sport…but it takes a team.”

What the team of Vasarhelyi and Chin have done here is no small feat. That’s aptly illustrated by a more recent film about adventure, “Arthur the King.” While that film follows a professional adventure racing team, the production values (lighting, staging and framing) are poorly done and don’t engage the audience or bring a sense of documentary level reality.

“Nyad” made its world premiere at the 50th Telluride Film Festival in September of last year (2023). Initially released in theaters on 20 October 2023, it is now streaming on Netflix (as of 3 November 2023).