INDIANAPOLIS — You may see the title and think this is how two die-hard Star Wars fans met at a pop culture convention and married in their version of a galaxy far, far away.
Sorry if you're disappointed, but the death-defying documentary, "Skywalkers: A Love Story," follows a daredevil couple as they put their love and trust to the test by illegally scaling the world's second-tallest skyscraper to perform an acrobatic stunt.
Director Jeff Zimbalist ("Momentum Generation," "The Two Escobars") said he came across the story of Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau because he was an "amateur by very passionate rooftopper" in his teens and 20s.
"I was drawn to it for a lot of the same reasons the two main characters were — it was transcendent, it was the calling of the unknown, an opportunity to face my fears on my own terms," Zimbalist said. "I didn't even know it had a name – I just called it trespassing – and I discovered it's called rooftopping or urban exploring, or as our two artists call it, skywalking."
And you'd be right if you were inclined to think scaling some of the tallest buildings in the world was illegal.
"It was guerilla filmmaking. It was renegade filmmaking. It was our top concern that everybody was safe, that nobody got arrested, nobody got hurt," Zimbalist said. "We had a very strict safety protocol, which we had written out and signed — not only with our skywalkers, but also with their families, their siblings, their parents."
While the crew didn't scale the skyscrapers, Zimbalist said the filmmakers and camera operators would trespass onto lower roofs to capture the scenes.
"These two are constantly negotiating with each other while they're on these climbs — what their own threshold or risk is," Zimbalist said. "Because they're trained acrobats and gymnasts and they have a very heightened sense of concentration or balance, there's things they're doing that no one else can do. They're at the top of their game."
Despite safety protocols in place, it's still incredibly dangerous, and Zimbalist was constantly communicating with Beerkus and Nikolau.
"The main conversation I had with them was, 'I don't think this film rides on whether or not you succeed these climbs. Even if you fail at the Merdeka 118 – the second-highest building in the world – the real suspense is whether or not you're gonna choose to trust each other. That's going to be satisfying for an audience member,'" Zimbalist said. "'Please don't overdo it. Don't do anything you wouldn't do otherwise for the cameras — in fact, do a little less than you would do otherwise because we're really nervous down here.'"
The 100-minute documentary premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was quickly acquired by Netflix for distribution rights.
"Everything about this has been a dream come true," Zimbalist said. "Something that's never happened to me before – and I've been doing this a long time – is without fail, every screening, the audience applauds during the movie. I've had applause after the movie, but during the climax of the movie – no matter where we are, and we've taken the film around the world now – the catharsis, the release of that tension and suspense, people just break out into cheers. It's been an amazing experience."
"Skywalkers: A Love Story" is now streaming on Netflix.