Endurance – The new Sir Ernest Shackleton documentary will premiere at the 2024 London Film Festival

The stern of the Endurance underwater with the name and emblematic polestar. (Credit: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust)

Endurance is the latest edge-of-your-seat documentary from Academy Award winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) and Natalie Hewit (Antarctica: Ice Station Rescue) – documenting two expeditions in a dynamic adventure that speaks to the dreams, challenges, excitement and philosophies of two eras.

In a legendary feat of leadership and perseverance, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton kept alive his crew of 27 men for over a year despite the loss of their ship in frigid pack ice. Over a century later, a team of modern-day explorers sets out to find the sunken ship.

Using unprecedented AI tools, the actual voices of Shackleton and his crew “read” their personal diaries from the 1914 expedition and, illustrated with Frank Hurley’s original expedition footage and photos, create a shiver-inducing venture into the past using immersive techniques. Audiences are placed into you-are-there scenarios as Shackleton and six crew members speak their own diary entries, something never recorded when they were alive.

In early 2022, the Endurance22 expedition team, onboard the South African icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II, carrying cutting-edge undersea search technology, set out to find the Endurance at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. Expedition Leader Dr. John Shears, expedition subsea manager Nico Vincent, director of exploration Mensun Bound and historian and broadcaster Dan Snow led a team of experts from around the globe in search of this perfect time capsule.

Endurance will have its world premiere at the London Film Festival on Saturday 12th October. It then hits cinemas nationwide from Monday 14th October.