Imagine suffering a panic or anxiety attack on a walk in the park or on the commute to and from work or as you watch your favorite docu-series via streaming.
Now imagine a panic attack almost 2,000 feet above the ground as you tightly grip a metal ladder or scaffolding buffeted by 40-50 MPH winds. Even then, your imagination — and mine and everyone else’s — isn’t capable of duplicating, let alone replicating the first-hand experience of the so-called “rooftoppers” at the center of Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s singularly vertiginous documentary, Skywalkers: A Love Story.
Little can, but Zimbalist, Bukhonina, and the charismatic co-stars of Skywalkers: A Love Story, Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau, do their (next) level best to convey the sheer exhilaration, elation, and/or euphoria of climbing the highest, human-made structures and living to tell their stories to the world at large (via social media, of course). It certainly helped that Beerkus and Nikolau, Russian-born Gen Z’ers, recorded practically every aspect of their personal and professional lives, from the incredibly risky climbs up and down the highest buildings they could find in Russia and later elsewhere to supposedly candid confessions straight to their video cameras or cell phones.
Deliberately structured around a "heist" plot, Zimbalist and Bukhonina open Skywalkers: A Love Story near the end of Beerkus and Nikolau’s joint quest to summit one of the highest buildings in the world in Malaysia, Merkeba 118. As they scramble to avoid discovery in a makeshift “cave,” Skywalkers: A Love Story hits the rewind button, introducing first Nikolau and then Beerkus during their early, individual free-styling days, Beerkus as the more experienced climber and Nikolau, the daughter of circus acrobats and a trained gymnast herself, who becomes obsessed with combining the two into a singular form of revenue-generating performance art.
Initially wary rivals, then partners-in-rooftopping, and eventually, lovers, Beerkus and Nikolau pushed and prodded each other into greater and greater feats of urban climbing in and out of Russia, with Beerkus serving not just as a co-conspirator, but also her photographer and — thanks to advanced drone tech — videographer, capturing Nikolau in a variety of poses across vertigo-inducing rooftops, ladders, and spires. Much of what we see in Skywalkers: A Love Story originates in the hundreds of hours of footage Beerkus and Nikolau’s took during their climbs.
Their joint obsession with new, untouched skyscrapers, however, runs headlong into intra-personal conflict when Beerkus, increasingly concerned about the incredible risks they’re taking with every climb, raises a skyscraper-sized caution flag. For Beerkus, expressing his concern for Nikolau’s safety reflects his love for her. Nikolau, however, sees that concern as suffocating and stifling, motivated less by her safety than his possessiveness. That kind of conflict would end practically any romantic relationship, let alone one founded on a mutual obsession with an extreme, risk-embracing activity like rooftopping.
Add to that Covid-related shutdowns around the world and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Beerkus and Nikolau’s relationship seems doomed to extinction. Russia and Ukraine get at most a passing comment, innocuous in form and content, the likely result of fears about censorship (or worse). Ultimately, however, Beerkus and Nikolau, motivated by a combination of loyalty to each other and promises of sponsorship/NFT money, temporarily agree to a truce, setting aside their differences and doubts to follow through on potentially their last climb together.
It’s there that Zimbalist and Bukhonina Skywalkers: A Love Story noticeably shifts from an episodic dramatic structure into the heist-thriller sub-genre. As discovery means capture and capture means extensive jail time in a Malaysian prison, Beerkus and Nikolau must spend hours, days, and weeks heavily researching the best way to bypass multiple layers of high-end security before they can even try climbing and summiting the spire atop the Malaysian skyscraper.
As descriptors, 'tense' and 'intense' barely cover the turn into the heist-thriller portion of the documentary. Well before that last, potentially fatal climb into the morning sky, Zimbalist and Bukhonina have masterfully laid out why audiences on the other side of the screen should care for Beerkus and Nikolau’s respective fates.
Charting their initial interest in rooftopping, the turn toward all-encompassing, overwhelming obsession, and their ups and downs individually and collectively, makes for propulsive, enthralling storytelling of the highest non-narrative order.
Skywalkers: A Love Story premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. A theatrical release will follow later this year.