The Dawn Wall

Watch The Dawn Wall (2017) online on iFILM — a documentary from directors Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer following the January 2015 free climb that put breaking news alerts on phones around the world. Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson spent nineteen days on the sheer granite face of El Capitan in Yosemite, attempting the route every serious climber had written off as unclimbable.

The Dawn Wall route runs 3,000 feet of near-vertical stone, with holds sometimes no wider than a coin edge and temperatures dropping well below freezing at night. Jorgeson got stuck on a single crux section for days, trying the same moves over and over while the media circus built below. Lowell and Mortimer dig back through Caldwell's life — the Kyrgyzstan hostage ordeal, the severed finger, the long obsession with this specific piece of rock — and the context reframes the climb entirely. This is not a man chasing a record. It is a man who found the one thing stubborn enough to match him.

Both directors are climbers themselves and shot on the wall alongside Caldwell and Jorgeson. The footage does not simulate exposure — it is shot inside it. Stream The Dawn Wall (2017) on iFILM.