Workplace romance can be tricky. Just ask Angela Nikolau and Ivan “Vanya” Beerkus, found bickering at the climax of their new documentary, Skywalkers: A Love Story (premiering July 19 on Netflix). But work looks a bit different for them: The Russian couple are professional “rooftoppers” who have spent dozens of hours climbing all 118 stories of the Merdeka skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia—also known as the second-highest building in the world. When they reach the top of Merdeka’s metal spire, which stretches 2,227 feet into the sky, Beerkus will attempt to hoist Nikolau in a Dirty Dancing–style lift—that is, if they agree to go through with it. As Beerkus notes in the film, “This is the craziest shit we’ve ever done.”

That’s saying something, considering that one of the couple’s early dates was spent scaling the Eiffel Tower. They spent another in jail, after being arrested while descending the Notre Dame cathedral. So go the death-defying Nikolau and Beerkus, who partnered with director Jeff Zimbalist and codirector Maria Bukhonina, who also acts as their translator for a conversation about their free-falling love story.

The documentary’s origins date back to the early ’90s, when Zimbalist began rooftopping—i.e. making unsecured, often illegal ascents up a tall structure. At the time, the filmmaker didn’t know the practice had a name. “I just called it trespassing,” he says with a laugh. “I was drawn to it for a lot of the same reasons that Ivan and Angela were—the transcendence, attraction to the unknown, being able to escape the preprescribed destinations of the city and find these autonomous places to face my fear and figure out who I wanted to be on my own terms.”

Zimbalist spent years in search of rooftoppers to follow for a doc. He encountered a lot of “daredevils dangling for likes” before he met Nikolau—the first major female rooftopper to burst onto the scene, who found the sport after growing up in a traveling circus. “Her influences were Basquiat and Warhol, not the Kardashians,” says Zimbalist. When she introduced him to Beerkus, “they presented their relationship as a competition or a rivalry. But you could sense under the surface that there was a flirtation, a courtship bubbling.” He became intrigued by the parallels between extreme climbing and romantic trust. “So many of the stories we have access to are about morally compromised subjects—about deceit, betrayal, and abandonment,” says Zimbalist. “Our hope is that Skywalkers can encourage all of us to lean in to trusting each other again, especially when it’s the scariest thing to do.”

As they shot the film over six years across six countries, the couple helped capture more than 200 hours of original footage from their climbs. (They got an “extreme cinematography” credit on Skywalkers in return.) But the most daunting scenes they shot were those on the ground. “Yeah, they weren’t afraid of the heights at all,” Zimbalist smiles. “It was just revealing their true selves.”

Nikolau and Beerkus are used to curating their image for social media. In the film, though, they were asked to get real about their fears surrounding falling—both from buildings and for each other. “They taught us how to rooftop, and we taught them how to do feature film—warts and all,” says Bukhonina. “Of course, temperatures get high sometimes, and things fly.”

This happens at two pointed moments during the film—once when Nikolau has a panic attack while on a climb, and another when the couple get in a heated argument on the street. Beerkus asks the cameras to stop shooting during the latter scene. “Every relationship goes through a lull or hits a plateau, and this film happened to be around when that was happening to us,” Beerkus tells VF. “Talking to filmmakers is kind of like therapy as well,” he adds with a smile, “because you have to explain your feelings to somebody.”

Witnessing these pressure points gave Beerkus and Nikolau a clearer picture of their dynamic, for better and worse. “Seeing ourselves on the screen renewed our commitment to our lifestyle,” he says. “Before we saw the film, we sort of thought that it’s routine—we just do our life like everyone else’s. But participating in the film reminded us that we live an unusual lifestyle and we made some choices that we’re proud of.”

Of course, most couples don’t spend their days intentionally putting themselves in mortal danger. “This film contains extremely dangerous and illegal activities,” a disclaimer warns at the start of Skywalkers. “Do not attempt to imitate.” Says Zimbalist, “It was important to us to avoid any thoughts in a viewer’s head about copycatting the activity. We make a big meal out of how they’re trained acrobats and gymnasts, and they have a heightened sense of balance and concentration—that they’re actually athletes.”

The film also acknowledges the many deaths that have resulted from skywalking, and Zimbalist says safety for its subjects was their priority. “Don’t do anything for the camera that you wouldn’t do for yourselves otherwise,” he told Nikolau and Beerkus, who, during one climb, had to remind his partner: “Don’t rush—the importance is your life.” Says Zimbalist, “We had a whole safety protocol with their families, a written-out document that said we could only go up to certain rooftops with them. When the spire or crane started, they would film that [portion of the climb] on their own.”

Media coverage has tended to focus on the #content produced from their climbs, inviting criticism—and conspiracy—about the motives behind the couple’s work. But making the doc was less about silencing naysayers and more about exposing others to this often misunderstood pursuit. “Our idea is never to prove anything to anybody, but just to do our art,” Nikolau tells VF. “There’s not another couple doing what we’re doing, so we’re hoping that this film will show people the truth behind us as artists striving to create a new art form, a new point of view on life.”

For months before the film’s final climb, Nikolau and Beerkus wrestled with their decision to go through with it. At one point, while sequestered in Merdeka’s overheated construction site with dwindling food and water, Nikolau recalls asking Beerkus, “What’s going to happen if we don’t make it?” before deciding, “Oh no, if we have to go again and pick another building, we’ll have to reshoot the whole film. It’ll be too much work.”

Zimbalist insists that whether the couple succeeded in climbing the windy apparatus was never the point. “Even if you fail, what’s going to be satisfying is whether you choose to trust each other,” he told Nikolau and Beerkus. “What we’re hoping to build here as a love story has the central suspense [of] whether Angela decides to trust Ivan.” In the film, Nikolau says most relationships involve two types of people: dream-chasing fliers like her, and safety-focused catchers like Beerkus. “We thought of ourselves as the catcher and them as the flyer in our relationship between filmmaker and subject,” says Zimbalist. “So during Merdeka, when they were reporting about some of the obstacles, we were saying to them, ‘Don’t get arrested. You guys have got to find your way out of there.’”

As strenuous as the climb appears in the movie, in real life, Nikolau says, “I remember suffering a lot more.” At one point during their trek, the couple was forced to shutter their cameras and save any remaining battery life for the spire’s peak. “So it was even more eventful than the film was able to show,” she adds. “Normally when we climb, there’s nobody expecting us to come back. So when we saw the film crew downstairs waiting for us, being so happy that we’re alive and safe, it felt like great teamwork.” Adds Zimbalist, “We were partners in crime—literally—and also partners in creativity, and that was a beautiful process.”

The pair’s intrepid ascent, which was later projected as an NFT in Times Square, has elicited emotional reactions from early audiences. “I haven’t been to a single screening where people haven’t applauded during the final lift at Merdeka,” says Zimbalist. “ To look at audiences covering their eyes and gesturing towards the screen and yelling…it’s more like a sporting event than a film.”

The couple, who have been residing in—and climbing their way through—Bangkok, is next headed to New York City. They don’t divulge details about upcoming climbs, but admit that it’ll be even more difficult for them to scale any city’s skyscrapers after the documentary. “There’s a big chance people will recognize us,” says Beerkus. “We are already banned from some sites in Europe because we seem to be in some database—they see us coming before we even get close. So there’s a big chance the film will impact that even further.” But this so-called daredevil couple remains undeterred. As Beerkus puts it, “That just means we’ll have to prepare better.”