Director Jennifer Peedom
Jim Schembri. (2016, May 2). Sherpa - Interview with Jennifer Peedom [Video]. Youtube. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Utu3-xqbvWQ
Director Information
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ACO.(2025). ACO 2024: Meet filmmaker Jennifer Peedom.https://www.aco.com.au/news/2023-november/2024-meet-director-jennifer-peedom.
Get to know the filmmaker and director behind the ACO's River and Mountain, and Netflix phenomenon, Sherpa.
Jennifer Peedom is a BAFTA-nominated filmmaker and director.
Born in Canberra, Peedom studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She worked in corporate roles, including as a commodities trader, before taking an unconventional route into documentary filmmaking. -
AIDC.(2025). Jennifer Peedom (Australia) Director/Producer/Co-Founder Stranger Than Fiction.https://www.aidc.com.au/whos-coming/jennifer-peedom/
Jennifer Peedom is a BAFTA and Emmy nominated writer, director and producer known for her compelling and immersive storytelling.
Reviews
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latrobe.(2022). Sherpa: Stories of Life and Death. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2022/opinion/sherpa-stories-of-life-and-death
Few communities have enjoyed the collective fame and individual obscurity of the Sherpas. This minority group, living across the high-Himalaya border between Tibet (China) and Nepal, has become famous for its many world-class mountain climbers. -
Rotten Tomatoes. (n.d.). Sherpa. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sherpa/reviews
Cinema is full of representations of the landscape that inspire terror.... Jennifer Peedom's Sherpa is the most recent of that canon: it is a climbing film, an Australian film and a documentary about the deadliest day in Everest's history.
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Horrell, M. (2024). Sherpas A long-awaited history of Everest in the commercial era. https://www.markhorrell.com/blog/2016/my-review-of-sherpa-trouble-on-everest/
I expect not too many people have found themselves in a movie theatre watching a two-hour film about a real life drama for which they have been an eyewitness. In December I had that experience for the first, and perhaps the only, time in my life.
Sherpa cracks $1m
Jim Schembri. (2016, May 4). Sherpa - Interview with Jennifer Peedom [Video]. Youtube. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Utu3-xqbvWQ
Sherpa wins an award
Premiere Screen. 2015, December 2). Sherpa - Jennifer Peedom & John Smithson – BFI LFF Best Documentary Winner Interview [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ94a0GFbPI
Sherpa culture
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Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). Sherpa. Britannica School. Retrieved April 6, 2025, from https://school-eb-com-au.db.scotch.wa.edu.au/levels/high/article/Sherpa/67323
Sherpa, also called Sharwa, group of some 150,000 mountain-dwelling people of Nepal; Sikkim state, India; and Tibet (China); they are related to the Bhutia. Small groups of Sherpas also live in parts of North America, Australia, and Europe. Sherpas are of Tibetan culture and descent and speak a language called Sherpa, which is closely related to the form of Tibetan spoken in Tibet.
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Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). Apa Sherpa. Britannica School. Retrieved April 6, 2025, from https://school-eb-com-au.db.scotch.wa.edu.au/levels/high/article/Apa-Sherpa/488535
Sherpa, also called Sharwa, group of some 150,000 mountain-dwelling people of Nepal; Sikkim state, India; and Tibet (China); they are related to the Bhutia. Small groups of Sherpas also live in parts of North America, Australia, and Europe. Sherpas are of Tibetan culture and descent and speak a language called Sherpa, which is closely related to the form of Tibetan spoken in Tibet.
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Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). Nepal. Britannica School. Retrieved April 6, 2025, from https://school-eb-com-au.db.scotch.wa.edu.au/levels/high/article/Nepal/108755
Nepal, country of Asia, lying along the southern slopes of the Himalayan mountain ranges. It is a landlocked country located between India to the east, south, and west and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north. Its territory extends roughly 500 miles (800 kilometres) from east to west and 90 to 150 miles from north to south. The capital is Kathmandu.
River by Jennifer Peedom
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NZIFF.CO.NZ. (2025). River. https://www.nziff.co.nz/2021/archive/river/
Let this exultant ode to the life-sustaining waterways that criss-cross our planet wash over you, captured in jaw-dropping imagery by Mountain director Jennifer Peedom.
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Jefferson, D. (2022). River: Australian documentary narrated by Willem Dafoe highlights the importance and precarity of rivers worldwide. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-24/river-documentary-willem-dafoe-jennifer-peedom/100932194
Willem Dafoe was filming Spider-Man: No Way Home in Atlanta in 2021 when he used a day off to record narration for an independent Australian documentary, titled River.
Wall of Shadows trailer
Vertical Vision Studio. (2020, October 11). The Wall of Shadows - official trailer (ENG) [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW-SakwGwq8
Walls of Shadows
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Clarke, C. (2025). The Wall of Shadows review – climbing film overturns smiling Sherpa stereotype.https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/18/the-wall-of-shadows-review-climbing-film-subverts-smiling-sherpa-stereotype
Like Jennifer Peedom’s 2015 film, Sherpa, this climbing documentary is more interested in the Nepali ethnic group than the westerners who hire them – chipping away at the stereotype of Sherpas as smiling, uncomplaining helpers.