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‘It’s easier than life on the ground’: meet the Russian climbers who fell in love scaling the world’s skyscrapers | Documentary films | The Guardian

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Extreme ‘rooftoppers’ Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus are the stars of a thrilling new documentary, Skywalkers, which charts their attempts to illegally scale the world’s tallest buildings. They tell us how they found love along the way “T his film contains extremely dangerous and illegal activities. Do not attempt to imitate.” Those words flash up on the screen at the start of Skywalkers: A Love Story, the most vertigo-inducing documentary you will see this year. It tells the story of two Russian “rooftoppers”, Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, who find fame by scrambling to the top of the world’s tallest buildings and posing there, without harnesses or safety nets, taking photographs and films to post on social media to incite wonder and admiration. On their way up a construction crane on the tower of Goldin Finance 117 in Tianjin, China, they begin to fall in love. The film, artfully shaped by director Jeff Zimbalist, himself a former rooftopper, culminates in their attempt to climb

‘If you keep helping each other through the obstacles, you get where you are going’: Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus in a scene from Skywalkers: A Love Story. Photograph: Netflix View image in fullscreen ‘If you keep helping each other through the obstacles, you get where you are going’: Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus in a scene from Skywalkers: A Love Story. Photograph: Netflix Documentary films This article is more than 2 years old ‘It’s easier than life on the ground’: meet the Russian climbers who fell in love scaling the world’s skyscrapers This article is more than 2 years old Extreme ‘

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