For Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, the documentary “Skywalkers: A Love Story” was as much about their death-defying stunts as it was their romance.
When the documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024, director Jeff Zimbalist described it as a story where extreme climbing served as a metaphor for romantic trust, “compelling us to choose each other on the most epic scale,” according to a press release shared with the Deseret News at the time.
Now, two years later, the daredevil couple has literally taken that concept to heart.
On Wednesday, July 1, the couple drew worldwide attention as they scaled the antennae of the Empire State Building — reaching 1,454 feet off the ground — and got engaged, and then arrested.
Daredevil couple climbs to the top of the Empire State Building
After ascending the 200-foot needle atop the Empire State Building, the couple unfurled a black banner with large white letters: “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace.”
Shortly after, on a slightly lower platform that had a little more room for kneeling on one knee, Beerkus proposed to his longtime girlfriend.
The couple posted photos of the once-in-a-lifetime moment, which has nearly 3 million likes on Instagram.
They were arrested after their descent, and received several charges, including burglary, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief, CNN reported.
Beerkus told police he wanted to “do something special” for the engagement, per The Associated Press.
The pair were released without bail and are due back in court Aug. 24, according to CNN.
Empire State Building management has said the climb was “unauthorized” and didn’t endanger anyone in the skyscraper. A court complaint noted that police found a broken lock on a security door on the building’s restricted-access 104th floor — the highest public floor is the observation deck on the 102nd, per The Associated Press.
“The last thing that people who are responsible for the Empire State Building want is to turn this place into a target for that sort of activity, because ultimately it will end in some sort of tragedy. The danger here, the recklessness, is obvious and can’t be overstated,” Andrew McCabe, former FBI deputy director, told CNN.
The couple’s attorney, Jason Krinsky, said he and his clients would determine their next steps once prosecutors provided evidence.
“What a way to propose — something you can only dream of,” he said outside court on Thursday, per The Associated Press. “So you’ve got to, you know, give him some credit for that.”
What is ‘Skywalkers: A Love Story’ about?
The viral moment comes two and a half years after the couple appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, for the world premiere of their documentary “Skywalkers: A Love Story.”
Filmed in six countries over six years, the documentary chronicles their illegal climb of Merdeka 118 in Malaysia — the second-tallest building in the world.
“To save their career and their relationship, a daredevil couple journey across the globe to illegally climb the world’s last super skyscraper and perform a life-or-death acrobatic stunt on the spire,” per a plot synopsis for the documentary at the time of the Sundance Film Festival.
The documentary also highlights Nikolau’s rise to fame in the male-dominated field of rooftopping, and how she developed a relationship with Beerkus, one of Russia’s top rooftoppers who has explored landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, Sagrada Familia, Notre Dame and Shanghai Tower. Together, the pair developed the genre of “skywalking.”
Although “Skywalkers: A Love Story” didn’t win any awards at Sundance, it was acquired by Netflix shortly after its debut and is available for streaming on the platform.
“I was a passionate, amateur rooftopper in my youth before the activity had a name. When I discovered others were doing creative trespassing missions around the world, I took off my balaclava, put on my journalist hat, and dove deep, tracking the growth of the phenomena for two decades looking for a personal story in that world worthy of a film,” director Jeff Zimbalist said in a statement at Sundance. “Then I found Angela and Vanya and knew this was it.”