[Source: AP]

Filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have given audiences thrilling and sometimes terrifying front-row seats to incredible feats of human ambition in their documentary work.

From Alex Honnold’s white-knuckle climb up Yosemite’s El Capitan in the Oscar-winning “ Free Solo ” to the claustrophobic blackness awaiting the cave divers who rescued the trapped soccer team in Northern Thailand in “ The Rescue,” their understanding of the personalities capable of such impossible accomplishments is almost unparalleled in filmed storytelling.

It is not surprising, then, that they’d be interested and uniquely equipped to tell the story of Diana Nyad and her treacherous 110-mile (177-kilometer) swim from Cuba to Key West at age 64 for their first narrative film, “ Nyad,” now available to watch on Netflix.

But there would be at least one big difference in bringing “Nyad” to life: actors.

“In nonfiction, you observe. You’re like the closest listener,” Vasarhelyi told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

In fictionalized narrative, she found creative collaborators in their decorated core cast: Annette Bening, who plays Nyad, Jodie Foster as her friend and coach Bonnie Stoll, and Rhys Ifans as the ship’s navigator.

“It felt like a super-sizing of something,” she said. “Like, suddenly your creativity can go further because you have these resources and partners.”

Both Chin and Vasarhelyi, who are married and have two children, had been exploring opportunities in fiction when the script for “Nyad” came their way. Always drawn to characters with impossible dreams, they loved that this was wrapped in a female experience.