Hi All,
Here is the story of Angela Nikolau. This is a noon chart.
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Angela Nikolau
Angela Nikolau (born 24 June 1993) is a Russian rooftopper and blogger who gained recognition due to her unusual photographs taken on the roofs of skyscrapers around the world.
Early life
Angela Nikolau was born in Moscow on 24 June 1993, to a family passionate about circus art.
For the first six years of school, she attended public schools, later transferring to a Christian School of Arts. Nikolau did rhythmic gymnastics from the age of seven until she was 16. She has worked as an art teacher for children since she was 16.
After graduating, Nikolau entered the Russian State Specialized Academy of Arts. She studied there for five years but left during her senior year to pursue her passion in rooftopping and photography.
Rooftopping
Nikolau took her first rooftop images in Moscow. After that she was actively travelling around the world and publishing photos taken at height.
In 2015, Nikolau was engaged as a witness in an investigation against a rooftopper Vladimir Podrezov and his friends who painted the star of the Stalinist skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment into Ukrainian flag colours.
In 2016, Nikolau went to China for the first time to scale the highest construction site in the world. Together with Ivan Beerkus, they climbed Goldin Finance 117 in Tianjin and the construction crane at the top of the tower. As of April 2020, the video shot by the two, was viewed more than 920,000 times. The video attracted the attention of the global media.
In 2017, Nikolau played the main character in the Danish documentary On the Edge of Freedom.
In 2018, she played one of the lead roles in a Who is Next? documentary by Slovak documentarian Miro Drobný.
In 2022, Nikolau and Beerkus scaled the rooftop of the Malaysian skyscraper Merdeka 118 - the second-tallest building in the world. This event was covered by multiple media around the world. Instagram videos of the accomplishment reached 8.6 million views.
Nikolau gained 730,000 followers on Instagram during her career.
Nikolau creates non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using photographs of her pursuits. Her works were included in the NFT Yearbook in 2022.
Angela appeared in the feature-length documentary Skywalkers: A Love Story, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2024 and was acquired by Netflix in the same year.
Notable climbs:
Location Building Date Height, m
Moscow, Russia Kudrinskaya Square Building 2013 156
Moscow, Russia Triumph Palace 2013 264.1
Moscow, Russia Federation Tower, Vostok Tower 2013 373.7
Moscow, Russia Victory Park, Victory Monument 2014 141.8
Moscow, Russia Four Seasons Hotel Moscow 2014 70
Moscow, Russia Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya 2014 136
Moscow, Russia Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building 2014 176
Moscow, Russia Moscow Kremlin Wall 2014 19
Moscow, Russia Evolution Tower 2015 246
Moscow, Russia Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia main building 2015 172
Moscow, Russia OKO 2016 354.1
Moscow, Russia Sberbank City 2016 168
Moscow, Russia Russian Academy of Sciences Presidium Building 2016 120
Moscow, Russia GUM (department store) 2016 33
Tianjin, China Goldin Finance 117 2016 597
Hong Kong Tsing Ma Bridge 2016 206
Hong Kong Island Shangri-La 2016 213
Shenzhen, China Ping An International Finance Centre 2016 599
Macau L'Arc Macau 2016 217
Guangzhou Xinguang Bridge 2016 130
Bangkok King Power Mahanakhon 2017 314
Bangkok Grande Centre Point Hotel 2017 150
Shanghai The Ritz-Carlton Shanghai 2017 160
Hong Kong Lee Garden One 2017 240
Dubai Al Yaqoub Tower 2017 328
Paris Sainte-Clotilde 2017 70
Paris Cheminée du Front de Seine 2017 130
Shanghai K11 (Shanghai) 2019 278
Chongqing Chongqing World Trade Center 2019 283.1
Chongqing United International Mansion 2019 286
Chongqing Chaotianmen Bridge 2019 142
Almaty Esentai Tower 2022 168
Almaty Curly Tau 2022 132.5
Kuala Lumpur Merdeka 118 2022 678.9
Personal life
Father – Dmitriy Nikolau, circus performer, clown and animal trainer.
Mother – Olga Nikolau, circus performer.
Siblings: Diana, Tikhon, Matryona, Maria, Matvey.
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'Rooftopping is my art form': The death-defying couple who climb the world's tallest skyscrapers
Emma Jones
Skywalkers, a jaw-dropping Netflix documentary featuring Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, follows the "rooftoppers" as they risk their lives for art atop the world's tallest buildings.
A young couple are facing each other in the dawn sunshine. The man moves to lift her up, but she is hesitant.
"Don't worry, I got you," he assures her, as he lifts her above his head, in the pose made famous by the movie Dirty Dancing.
It's an intimate romantic moment, that's now shared with the rest of the world in the new Netflix documentary Skywalkers: A Love Story. What makes viewers' stomachs churn witnessing it though, is that it takes place at the top of a 678.9m-high building, on top of a spire that's barely 1.8m wide. And if Ivan Beerkus drops Angela Nikolau, she'll fall into the hundred-storey abyss below, taking him with her.
The film that tells the story of this Russian pair of "rooftoppers" (the name given to their activity of climbing structures without safety equipment) is full of swooping, lurching moments, where audiences can feel that they too, are in danger of losing their footing, high above the ground. Nikolau and Beerkus are the first "couple" from this scene and arguably now the most famous, especially after they claimed to have (illegally) entered and climbed the spire of the second tallest building in the world in December 2022, the Merdeka 118 tower in Malaysia, and posted footage to prove it.
The higher I went, the easier it was to breathe – Ivan Beerkus
Skywalkers is partly about the journey to climb that skyscraper, but along the way Nikolau and Beerkus display both visual artistry and seeming insanity in their desire for risk. They scale frost-covered cranes dangling high above a city, take in sunsets and cityscapes from astonishing vantage points few other humans will ever share. They have a credit on the documentary for "extreme cinematography", as much of the drone footage of their climbs belongs to them. (No wonder the first image you'll actually see is a warning that "this film contains extremely dangerous and illegal activities. Do not attempt to imitate.")
The story, co-directed by the US's Jeff Zimbalist and Russian Maria Bukhonina, starts with the couple as teenagers, discovering how they began climbing. "Rooftopping" has been a subculture since the 1990s (Zimbalist says that he did it in the US as a young man) and 30-year-old Ivan Beerkus became involved in the 2010s in Moscow, where there was a thriving scene. (Some of the most relatable moments in the film are where Beerkus's parents are begging him to get a "stable" job.)
Beerkus says in the documentary: "the higher I went, the easier it was to breathe" and tells the BBC that his thrill-seeking is part of his identity. "It gives me inspiration, it gives me motivation to live," he says. "Once I discovered that, it's just been something that's come naturally."
Angela Nikolau is the daughter of circus performers and went to art school. While the rise of Instagram and then TikTok in the 2010s and 2020s gave rooftoppers a potentially lucrative platform for posting videos, she insists their activity is for much more than clicks and fame on social media.
"Rooftopping is my art form," she tells the BBC.
"It motivated me that I have been the first woman doing it, and I was always interested in doing something new in the art space. Every time we set up an image, we develop it as a piece of art. I choose the colours and what I will wear. Ivan chooses where the drones will fly and how the image will be shot. We perform a painting in the air every time we do it."
With its combination of jaw-dropping imagery and attractive young protagonists, Skywalkers: A Love Story has all the elements to be a hit, like National Geographic's 2018 film Free Solo, about climber Alex Honnold's attempt to conquer a 900m vertical rock face at Yosemite National Park without any safety equipment. Further back, it recalls James Marsh's 2008 documentary Man on Wire, about Philippe Petit's 1974 stunt, performing acrobatics on a wire strung between the Twin Towers in New York. Both films went on to win best documentary feature Oscars as well as being commercial successes.
Is there something especially attractive about films featuring those who are ready to risk falling from a great height to those of us on the ground watching?
"It's like a rollercoaster," Nikolau says. "If you ride one, you experience a range of emotions. And we think our film will provide those sorts of emotions because it's not just about conquering a building. You see the downsides of the sport, you see the dangers of it, but you'll also see our relationship going up and down.
"People often tell us that when they've seen the movie, they say they come out of it feeling more alive than usual. So perhaps this genre provides the adrenaline that you'd get from a rollercoaster – to reboot and feel alive again."
Free Solo also made the relationship of Honnold and his now wife, Sanni McCandless, a focal point of the narrative. The directors of Skywalkers also state that the emotion of their movie is paramount: they claim it's not a story about the fear of falling from heights, but the fear of falling in love. Nikolau was abandoned by her father as a young child and, frequently, struggles to trust Beerkus.
"The love story was our vision from the beginning," Zimbalist tells the BBC.
"There's a wish fulfilment in watching humans push boundaries in ways that blow our mind. It's inspiring. But we didn't want to focus on this as a vertigo-inducing spectacle, we wanted to direct it towards the fear of falling in love and what that means. We felt that if we could direct it towards that, we're making something that will reach audiences who may not be interested in the visuals of the film."
'There was no point in hiding'
There's much in the story that's not set on top of skyscrapers. Over the seven or eight years it took to make the film, the couple meet and fall in love, then leave Russia because the Ukraine invasion and the shutting down of social media meant they had no means to make an income. The Covid-19 pandemic closed down the travel industry and they lost their sponsors. They lived by selling their artwork to private bidders, but climbing Merdeka, they admit, was almost a last gamble. Rooftopping is not a career with longevity, in every sense of the word, and the film shows the couple mourning people in their community who've lost their lives doing it.
Angela Nikolau's not just afraid to trust: the film shows her as visibly physically afraid during their stunts. Training in Thailand for the Merdeka event, she has a panic attack and is frozen, "paralysed" as she says, on a structure not even a metre wide, high above a city. The audience feels sick with her as Beerkus moves her limbs one at a time so that she's in a sitting position, yet still vulnerable.
Other times, more prosaically, they're seen bickering on top of a tower as they climb on their quest to strike a pose. Nikolau scolds Beerkus that "you always do this" and another time complains he hasn't taken a good photo of her legs yet.
"At the start, we wanted to avoid showing something less than a perfect relationship to the cameras," Nikolau says. "But eventually, we got used to spending so much time with the crew and seeing them first thing in the morning and last thing at night. We realised there was no point in hiding what it is."
I now find joy in people inventing new ways of accusing us of being fake – Angela Nikolau
That their relationship, which did begin on a commercial assignment, is real isn't in doubt, but they're often accused of pushing fake news or images, including immediately after their Merdeka climb.
"Oh, I love these couch critics," Nikolau says in response. "I love it when people start saying, 'oh no, it must have been green screen. You can tell there was a tile and a floor. You can tell it was photoshopped or she's wearing a safety harness.'
"That actually gets us more views and be seen by more people online. I now find joy in people inventing new ways of accusing us of being fake."
While there's a slickness to the documentary – the couple mainly speak Russian, but technology means their narration is provided in English, and the film also credits "story producers" – Zimbalist says he told those interested in backing the film that essentially, Skywalkers was guerilla film-making. Most of what the couple was doing was illegal, including getting into Merdeka 118. The documentary shows them spending about 30 hours in the building, hiding from construction workers, and filming themselves. After the successful pose on top of the tower, Zimbalist says, "we had Ivan fly the cards with the footage on it down so that if they got caught on the way down, they wouldn't have the cards on them."
The couple recently moved to New York in search of new opportunities. It's a city of skyscrapers, but do they want to continue the activity of climbing them – especially as so many more security guards will, because of this documentary, recognise them? "We really hope that now the film is coming out internationally, more people would want to do collaborations with us," Ivan Beerkus says.
"Something in the advertising commercial space, perhaps. We'd love that. But we're also looking forward to doing other things. Angela is a painter, I write music. We're always trying to think about new creative ways to continue to do this, while making a living off it."
However much its makers might nudge viewers towards the couple's relationship as the story of Skywalkers, the overriding sense of awe in the film comes from watching them work under extreme mental pressure at great heights. In the scenes filmed on top of Merdeka 118, high up in the sky and with almost nothing below them, Beerkus shows a single-minded focus and determination to seize the chance of getting their shot.
"It felt like a one-in-a-million type of chance," he says. "All my courage was flowing, I guess, and I knew I wasn't going to drop her, and I was ready to do what we came here to do. It felt like a perfect moment. And when I lifted Angela, I remember the silence. There must have been wind that high up, but I didn't feel anything, and I didn't hear anything. It was just the most perfect moment of silence and zen ever."
Skywalkers: A Love Story' is available on Netflix from 19 July 2024
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The True Story Of Rooftoppers Ivan Beerkus & Angela Nikolau
Jack Ori
Skywalkers: A Love Story is a Netflix documentary focused on the true story of Russian rooftopper couple Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau. The film, which is one of Netflix's best movies of 2024, is partially about two people who have enjoyed the cultural phenomenon of "rooftopping," or illegally climbing buildings, their entire lives. Rooftopping appeals to people who enjoy taking extreme risks, and the movie allows viewers to vicariously experience it through breathtaking shots and access to Beerkus and Nikolau's thoughts.
Although Beerkus and Nikolau contributed drone footage of their climbing expeditions that will satisfy people searching for action series on Netflix, the documentary is far more than a chronicle of the couple's adventures. For Beerkus and Nikolau, climbing is an art form that reflects their desire to live their lives fully. The documentary tells the story of how this extraordinary couple fell in love and celebrate life together through their dedication to climbing; the couple's climbs cannot be separated from their personalities or their relationship with each other.
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Beerkus and Nikolau are both Moscow-born climbers who have been engaging in the activity since they were teenagers, with Nikolau's background as a circus acrobat coming in handy as they climb buildings together. Beerkus got media attention before he and Nikolau met; in 2014, Nikolau followed his Instagram account where he was documenting the Stalin-era buildings he was climbing in Russia. Although she was not yet famous, Nikolau was also climbing buildings on her own during this period. She and Nikolau first connected online before beginning to climb buildings together.
Angela Nikolau is the first woman to participate in rooftopping as an art form.
The couple risks not only their safety, but also their freedom to scale buildings, as most of what they do is illegal. They take such extreme risks that critics often accuse them of putting fake footage on Instagram, a charge which they consistently deny. Skywalkers: A Love Story is one of Netflix's best documentaries because the crew accompanied them on dangerous and illegal climbs, often using drone footage provided by the climbers themselves, which adds to the intensity and immersion of the viewing.
In 2016, Beerkus invited Nikolau to join him on a climb in Hong Kong. At the time, he wasn't intending to have a romantic relationship with her; he needed a female climber as part of a sponsorship deal. However, while the couple was in Hong Kong together, they went out during a typhoon to look at rooftops and Nikolau fell for him during this risky activity. Soon afterward, they scaled several buildings in Hong Kong; each new adventure helped their new relationship to grow.
As of 2024, the couple is still together and has weathered many storms related to world events. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the loss of social media in their home country forced them to flee, and they lost income and sponsorship opportunities due to travel restrictions during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. This led to their most risky climb in 2022, as they desperately needed the money to survive. The couple currently lives together in New York City where they are pursuing new rooftopping collaborations as well as other types of art.
Skywalkers: A Love Story spends a lot of time on the 2022 Merdeka climb, which was one of the riskiest climbs Nikolau and Beerkus participated in over their career. This climb was extremely dangerous. The skyscraper was 2,200 feet tall, soany accident would be fatal, especially since the rooftoppers weren't using safety equipment. The film depicts Nikolau having a panic attack while training for this climb and completely freezing, which underscores the danger the couple faced.
Once they began the climb, the couple faced another type of danger: the potential loss of their freedom. They meticulously planned the climb, using drones to help them map it out, and decided to do it on the night of the World Cup because they thought security would be distracted. The Netflix crew wired them for sound before they began the climb, and at first all went according to plan. However, the couple decided to take a break until sunrise while halfway up, which was a nearly fatal flaw in their plan.
Nikolau and Beerkus awakened at sunrise to discover they were sharing the floor they had sneaked onto with a construction crew. They had to hide to avoid detection and didn't know how they would survive, as it was hot and the building was dusty from the construction. The pair hid for 30 hours but had to risk going out into the open to get some water. Eventually, they made it to floor 188, where posters warning them about the arrests of previous climbers sparked their determination to make it to the top of the building.
Beerkus attached the video footage to drones and flew it down so that if the couple were arrested before they got back on the ground, the crew would not lose the footage.
Between 2016 and 2022, Nikolau and Beerkus climbed many tall buildings that got them the type of media attention that led to Netflix giving them a green light for their documentary. Their relationship began when they climbed Goldin Finance Tower 117 in China. They have climbed several other buildings in China, most notably the Ping An Financial Centre. They have also climbed several buildings in Paris, including the Sainte-Clotide. They also attempted to climb the Notre Dame, but were arrested on the way down and held in a cell overnight, which is documented in the film.
This focus on authenticity sets Nikolau and Beerkus apart from other rooftoppers, especially those who take risks for the sake of it rather than planning meticulously so that they can create art while illegally perched on the top of tall buildings.
Skywalkers: A Love Story depicts both the failures and successes of the couple's life as rooftoppers. It also provides an authentic look at their relationship, including Nikolau's trust issues in general and arguments and bickering between the couple during their climbs and at other times in their lives. This focus on authenticity sets Nikolau and Beerkus apart from other rooftoppers, especially those who take risks for the sake of it rather than planning meticulously so that they can create art while illegally perched on the top of tall buildings.
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This couple’s hobby? Illegally scaling the world’s tallest buildings together
By Jacqui Palumbo,
What was your most thrilling first date? In 2016, two young Russians known for their extreme “rooftopping” adventures — where they attempt to illegally climb vertiginous landmarks like La Sagrada Familia and the Eiffel Tower — skipped the perfunctory happy hour cocktail and instead ascended China’s tallest incomplete skyscraper, the 1,957-foot-high Goldin Finance 117.
At the time, Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau didn’t know they’d end up together. Beerkus had invited Nikolau, a rare female member of the rooftopping community (she was scaling the proverbial glass wall before breaking it), to join him for the climb to produce sponsored social media posts. But it was the beginning of a long romantic and creative partnership, which has led them to travel thousands of miles — and thousands of feet in the air — together.
Eight years later, the documentary film “Skywalkers: A Love Story” takes an intimate look at their unusual romance through hundreds of hours of footage that, of course, includes heart-dropping POV footage from impossible heights and the occasional run-in with law enforcement.
Nikolau was the first major female rooftopper and caught the eye of Beerkus, who was looking to partner for social media content.
Like all couples, Beerkus and Nikolau have their ups and downs, and when they argue the stakes are a just bit higher than most (in one scene, Beerkus bravely accuses his girlfriend of being “too negative” as she gears up to nail a precarious acrobatic pose literally above the clouds). Through the pair’s unusual lifestyles, “Skywalkers” becomes a meditation on trust and commitment, though their stunts will also get your palms sweaty, if that’s your thing.
Directed by Jeff Zimbalist, a filmmaker with rooftopping experience of his own, and co-directed by Maria Bukhonina, ”Skywalkers” debuted at Sundance Film Festival in January and is now streaming on Netflix. It follows the couple, who utilize Nikolau’s background as a trained gymnast to create acrobatic stunts on narrow ledges, poles and scaffolding, as they take on increasingly difficult challenges and navigate their own budding relationship.
“It’s not just about the fear of falling from heights, but more about the fear of falling in love,” Zimbalist said in a video call with CNN. “Angela first told me that they were… competitors and rivals. But you could sense under the surface that there was this bubbling flirtation there.”
An architectural dare
As the documentary progresses, the pair plot out their most difficult climb yet: Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, the world’s second-tallest building. The gleaming 2,227-foot-tall tower, which opened earlier this year, is crowned with a 527-foot-tall spire whose apex is only accessible via a narrow internal ladder.
In 2022, when Beerkus and Nikolau made their plans, the “supertall” skyscraper had topped out but was still under construction. Evading security and reaching its apogee safely required an intense and elaborate scheme — one conjured while they worked through relationship issues. (At the time of their climb, the tower’s owner said police were investigating the pair for trespassing, although Malaysian authorities did not respond to CNN about whether further legal action was taken.)
Rooftopping is a contentious pastime — both for the danger it poses and participants’ reliance on illegal trespassing. With the urban “sport” emerging as one more of the more extreme ways to get likes on social media, several harrowing deaths have followed.
For “Skywalkers” the film crew followed Beerkus and Nikolau to document their stunts, but only to a point. Zimbalist emphasized his team’s safety measures, which were designed to ensure the crew neither endangered themselves nor presented any distractions for the couple.
“We talked a lot with Ivan and Angela, saying, ‘Please, don’t go do anything additionally crazy beyond what you would usually do,’” Zimbalist said. “Because to us, this isn’t a movie about whether or not you succeed at Merdeka or any other climb… the genuine suspense here is if you choose to trust each other.”
An ‘expanded state of mind’
For the couple, rooftopping isn’t just about thrill-seeking. Nikolau, the daughter of circus performers, says in the film that pushing herself to her limits was engrained from childhood and that she is always striving to better herself. For Beerkus, who scaled buildings alone in Moscow for years, rooftopping offers a sense of mental clarity.
“The higher I went, the easier it was to breathe,” he says to camera, recalling his earliest climbs. “This extreme life, this expanded state of mind, it’s essential for me.”
Zimbalist recognizes the dangers of rooftopping and says his film is not about “defending what they do against critics.”
Instead, he hope that ”Skywalkers,” in addition to its message on love and trust, provides a rare look at the hard work and planning behind the rooftoppers’ “polished” social media posts.
“With any activity that’s dangerous, social media tends to disguise the difficulty,” he said. “Telling the story behind a stunt helps to give context and just how challenging and how dangerous some of these things are.”
Believe it or not, Nikolau maintains that she is afraid of heights, something she has had to confront repeatedly to keep up with her chosen line of work.
“The fear never really went away; I just got better and better at facing it,” she explains in one clip.
So while the makers of “Skywalkers” would probably rather you don’t climb your nearest skyscraper, their film encourages us to dare — and say “yes” to the thing that scares us the most.
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