There are few dreams as marveled upon than that of human flight. It’s probably happened to you.You find yourself standing at the top of a mountain, a canyon sprawled out below, a bird soaring overhead. That feeling of suspension—what would it be like? What would you risk to taste it?

FLY, the latest documentary from Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, brings us inside the community and minds of those who have realized the dream. Over the course of seven years, the documentarians known for their previous work with big-game hunting culture in Trophy and ICE exploration Immigration Nation, take an intimate look at these dreamers. You might call them thrill-seekers or adrenaline junkies, but the film presents these individuals as freedom chasers—the taste of the forbidden fruit will inevitably set some on a path in which life without flight becomes unimaginable.

At the outset of the film we’re introduced to Jimmy Pouchert and Marta Empinotti, a couple deeply embedded into the base jumping community through years of pioneering the sport and commitment to teaching safety to those who are determined to parachute from mountaintops. “Early on we’d ask, ‘How does it feel?” says Schwarz, co-director of the film. “Jimmy would say, ‘You’ll never know, and no matter how good your footage is, you’ll never feel it.’”

Clusiau and Schwarz get as close as imaginable, both figuratively and literally, to recreating the agitation and sensations one feels when diving headlong from a cliff. Through dynamic cinematography and immersive sound design, the seasoned documentarians emulate the serenity and intensity of base jumping—the quiet moment of suspension that gives way to accelerating to over 200MPH.

“Over and over, people would tell us there was this moment where everything goes away,” says Clusiau. That moment? A final scrape of boot on granite. Then suspension-stilled air, and pure silence. And then wind. Resistance. Immense speeds. “I always describe it as sounding like a top gun buzzing by a tower,” says Schwarz.

It goes without saying that base jumping, or jumping off cliffs with a parachute, is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. But wingsuit base jumping, in which athletes jump from cliffs or planes wearing suits designed for sustained flight, is widely considered to be the most deadly sport in the world. The average fatality rate for wingsuit flying is 24 deaths a year. The community is small, and these deaths run through it like grief- stricken currents.

The film brings us close to these athletes, some of whom die chasing the dream. It asks questions—what leads people here? How do they carry on when encountering such profound grief without necessarily giving any answers? “We were very careful to not just glorify,” says Schwarz. “That’s not what this film is after. In order to understand why it’s worth it, you have to be able to look death in the eye. And that became our mindfuck. They’re inspiring BUT...how do you toe that line? There’s so much risk involved. But it did bring back: ‘Don’t forget to be foolish, don’t forget what actually matters.’ Look at their friendships—it was almost like the movie Stand by Me. Did you ever have friends like that?”