Filmmaking duo Elizabeth Chai Vasarheli and Jimmy Chin have gained fame making documentaries about people who have achieved the unthinkable — ropeless climber Alex Honnold in the Oscar-winning. Solo freeor divers Rescue who, against all odds, rescued a group of Thai children who were stranded in a flooded cave.

And it just so happens that the protagonists of their most famous films were men, but in their latest documentary, Wildlifethe focus shifts in large part to woman, conservationist and former Patagonian CEO, Chris Tompkins.

“It was really cool to make a movie where there’s a woman at the center,” Vasarhelyi commented at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, where the film was shown last month. Wildlifefrom National Geographic and Picturehouse, has just expanded to theaters in Southern California, including Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Bay Area after opening in New York and DC this past weekend.

The documentary tells the love story of Chris and her late husband, Doug Tompkins, founder of The North Face and co-founder of retail company Esprit. They meet in middle age at a time when Doug has abandoned his companies for a life in the wild terrain of remote Chile, and Chris also finds herself longing for a radical change in existence. Together they began to acquire lands in Chile and Argentina on a grand scale – not for their own enjoyment, but with a view to turning them over to those countries for the creation of vast national parks.

In the movie, Chris reads from her diary about being with Doug in Chile. “I feel the memories of almost 20 years in this valley. Years of joy, pain, doubts and reassurance… Few have lived as we have here.”

In a conversation with Deadline, Chris Tompkins acknowledged that it took some convincing to get her to agree to the documentary — but perhaps not for the reasons one might expect. She says rather than hoping to project a perfect image of herself, she wanted to make sure the film felt unflattering.

“I didn’t want it to be some kind of piece of fluff. I hope it was very honest,” Chris told Deadline. “I gave them everything — 26 years of magazines, all the photography, everything. Once I got in, I was all in. But it took me a while to decide.”

Wildlife It explores the arduous process Tompkins went through to convince the governments of Chile and Argentina that their motives were pure and that they were not trying to devour the Earth as part of an outrageous scheme that would endanger the national security of those nations. Along the way, the pair encounter death threats and secret surveillance by mysterious adversaries.

“Maybe four or five years after starting in Chile, someone sent me a book on the history of the creation of Grand Teton National Park [in Wyoming]. And I realized it took about 50 or 60 years to create it, and it was really a shooting process,” Chris notes. “And I thought, God Almighty, if I had just read the history of most national parks so long ago, to understand us so much more — first , how to deal with the threats and whatever was happening to us, but also prepared that, no matter where you are, that kind of conflict is inherent and will happen.”

A tragic event nearly derailed the massive conservation project. In 2015, Doug embarked on a kayaking trip on Lake General Carrera in Chile with a group of friends, including Yvonne Chouinard, founder of outdoor brand Patagonia, and Rick Ridgway, climber and filmmaker. High winds created huge waves, and Tompkins and Ridgway’s kayak capsized in the frigid water. Ridgway survived, but Doug succumbed to severe hypothermia.

Rick Ridgway, an old friend of co-director Jimmy Chin, appears in the film and shares his memories of that fateful day.

“There was an interview that we did in Patagonia, near the lake where Doug died, where we had our accident. And that was difficult because I had to resuscitate him,” Ridgway told Deadline. “While it was emotional, I had no qualms about putting him back on camera with Jamie behind the camera… Jamie and I are very close friends and I’ve been on the field with him in a lot of difficult circumstances.”

Speaking in Copenhagen, Chen recalled, “There were some interviews where we had to stop because the whole crew was crying. Like, sure, some of the interviews with Chris early on when Doug’s death was still really rough and she was kind of conceding it to us.” Really very emotional.”

Immediately after Doug’s death, Chris finds herself at a crossroads – whether it’s grieving deeply or moving forward with work to create national parks. As the movie shows, she summoned the force to continue. The vision of creating national parks has become a reality, and because of the ongoing work of the nonprofit Tompkins Conservation, nearly 15 million acres of pristine wilderness in Chile and Argentina are protected forever.

Today, Tompkins Conservation dedicates itself not only to preserving wild lands but to reintroducing species native to those habitats, animals that have been driven toward extinction.

“When we bought our first property in 1997 in Ibera, in northeastern Argentina, almost everything [creature] Missing, from jaguars all the way,” says Chris. “That’s when we really made a commitment and our work was forever changed… It’s at least half our job now, which is working with extirpated species.”

Tompkins, Ridgway, and Chouinard from Patagonia join the filmmakers for a film screening Wildlife Earlier this month at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A few months ago, Chouinard announced that he would turn the Patagonian estate into a conglomerate, with all profits donated to fighting climate change, protecting wildlife, and preserving biodiversity.

“The film inspires people to follow in the footsteps of Chris, Doug and Yvonne, but that doesn’t mean you have to create new national parks or give up your $3 billion company for the planet,” comments Ridgway. “We hope the movie will inspire people, as I said to the audience [in New York]Use whatever tools you have in your box. As climbers say, you never take the last step until you take the first. And you must comply. And as Doug always said, stick around and then figure it out. But commitment. Take this step.”

Ridgway added, “It’s not that we’re all rich enough to be philanthropists, but we can all get involved in supporting groups on the ground, doing work, working hard to save wild lands and wildlife. And they all need help. They all need volunteers.”

Kris Tompkins says she keeps her focus on the future.

“We want our legacy to be rebuilding Chile, rebuilding Argentina. And these are the people we’ve worked with for decades.” And because Doug died and because I’m going to die at some point — we know that — I made [these initiatives] They’re both independent… So, in my book, that’s our legacy—not so much what we did in the first 30 years, but what’s going to happen in the next 50 years with the second generation and the third generation of people.”