Nyad debuts Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi as non-documentary filmmakers, with through-lines to their prior work that are starting to feel like burgeoning auteur trademarks.

The Big Three:

First and foremost, they seem committed to devoting their films to understanding the psychology of alien humans — human aliens? we are not the same species — who can live only if they’re risking their mortal coils on some sort of grueling endurance sport.

And their history of documenting these physical activities in real life could’ve functioned as research in devising dynamic methods to film fictional reenactments of these potentially fatal exertions.

And they’ve retained documentary’s obsession with vivifying a process-oriented focus.