By Josh Bate
Mount Everest has been conquered countless times since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached its summit, but the achievement remains one of the most extraordinary feats of the 20th century nonetheless. Unfortunately, Tenzing, a new Apple TV movie making its Canadian premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), rarely feels like a movie worthy of such a remarkable accomplishment. Jennifer Peedom’s latest is filled with enormous mountains, perilous climbs, sweeping vistas, and a genuinely fascinating real-life central figure, yet the drama surrounding all of that grandeur is frustratingly ordinary. Rather than transforming an incredible true story into an equally stirring cinematic experience, Tenzing too often feels like a conventional sports drama that happens to take place on the world’s tallest mountain.
Tenzing recounts the journey of Himalayan Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay (Genden Phuntsok), who joins New Zealander Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston) and a team of climbers led by John Hunt (Willem Dafoe) in an attempt to become the first people to reach Mount Everest’s summit. Tenzing has already attempted the climb several times without success, and the film follows his latest expedition while periodically moving into his past to dive into his childhood and the loss of his wife.
There is an inherently compelling movie somewhere within that premise, particularly because Tenzing approaches the familiar Everest story from a perspective that has too often been pushed to the margins. It is genuinely refreshing to see a film about Everest place a Sherpa at the center of its story, rather than making him a supporting player in a Western adventurer’s narrative. Tenzing Norgay was not merely a helper accompanying Hillary up the mountain; he was an accomplished mountaineer undertaking a historic ascent himself. Peedom’s decision to foreground his experience therefore opens the door to a much richer examination of who gets to claim ownership over exploration and what it means for Western outsiders to arrive with the intention of conquering nature in a place that is already home to other people.
Sadly, Tenzing only scratches the surface of those ideas. The film acknowledges the uneasy dynamic between Tenzing and the Western climbers, especially in an early scenes before the climb has even began, but rarely digs into the larger implications of it all. There is a fascinating tension in the idea of Western adventurers treating Everest as something to be conquered while native people are relegated to secondary positions in their own land, but that conflict deserved considerably more attention than what the film ultimately affords.
The lack of depth extends into the film’s character work. Tenzing is surrounded by people who should provide emotional weight to his journey, but their relationships are often sketched rather than developed. Every other member on the expedition other than Hillary is a shell of a character, who hardly utters a word of dialogue. His wife is ostensibly one of the most important figures in his life, with their relationship positioned as a source of motivation for his continued attempts to reach the summit throughout flashbacks sprinkled throughout the story. The screenplay gives their connection so little room to breathe that the intended emotional payoff never materializes, however.
The same issue affects Tenzing’s relationship with Hillary. Their eventual friendship is one of the film’s central dramatic threads, but the movie struggles to convincingly depict how two men with such different backgrounds become lifelong companions. Their camaraderie often feels like a destination the screenplay has decided they must reach, rather than something that organically develops before our eyes. The uninspired dialogue and routine direction leave Phuntsok and Hiddleston with the unenviable task of manufacturing chemistry that the writing hasn’t adequately established.
One of the few emotional sequences that genuinely connects comes through Tenzing’s encounter with a hostile climber who regards him as an outsider. The confrontation, which prolongs over the course of the film, works precisely because it taps into the questions of identity, belonging, and prejudice that the film otherwise struggles to explore. For a brief moment, Tenzing’s personal experience becomes inseparable from the larger historical circumstances surrounding the expedition, and the character’s resilience feels earned rather than manufactured.
VERDICT: 6/10
Making its Canadian premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Tenzing is a frustratingly underwhelming treatment of an undeniably extraordinary story. Beautifully shot and anchored by an exceedingly warm performance from Genden Phuntsok, the film has the raw materials for a sweeping and emotionally powerful Everest epic, but its conventional storytelling, underdeveloped relationships, and limited exploration of its most intriguing ideas repeatedly hold it back. The decision to put Tenzing Norgay at the center is a welcome one, yet the movie doesn’t go nearly far enough in examining what his position meant within an expedition shaped by Western ambitions to conquer nature. Tenzing may depict one of the greatest feats in human history, yet it never quite captures the emotional gravity, complexity, or sense of wonder that such an achievement deserves.
Tenzing made its Canadian premiere at TIFF 2026. The film is scheduled to hit select theaters on October 9, followed by a global release on Apple TV on October 23.