He then put me in touch with another friend and it was really straight into the freediving world. I reached out to him initially, because he had put something out there. This photographer Daan Verhoeven posted this beautiful photo essay all about Stephen. I was intensely aware that the family and Alessia had just been through a massive tragedy and would be grieving for a long time afterwards. How did you get Stephen and Alessia’s friends and family involved in the documentary? Was there any reluctance on their part ? (If you haven’t watched it yet, you should probably stop reading now. Speaking by phone from Ireland, McGann told The Times about the “magical” process of making the documentary. While it’s likely to induce panic attacks in anyone with thalassophobia, “The Deepest Breath” is also a stunning work of filmmaking that includes hypnotic shots of divers descending into the darkness and visceral, on-the-scene footage from diving competitions - like an underwater “Free Solo.” “Their connection with the sea and what led them together - that story I found compelling in a really deep way,” McGann said. They started training together, became romantically involved and set their sights on an ambitious new goal: In July 2017, Zecchini was attempting to freedive to an arch 180 feet underwater at the Blue Hole, then swim through it - an extremely dangerous feat only one woman, the legendary Natalia Molchanova, had previously accomplished - when disaster struck. An intense connection was immediately apparent. Their paths crossed at a competition in 2017 where Zecchini, with guidance from Keenan, set a world diving record of -104 meters. After traveling the world, Keenan, originally from Dublin, found his calling as a highly trusted safety diver accompanying athletes on their ascent and intervening if they blacked out or otherwise needed assistance. Zecchini fell in love with the sport as a precocious child who was barred from competing until she turned 18 - much to her dismay - and was a formidable international contender by her early 20s. In the sport, athletes descend hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean using a single breath, no oxygen tanks and little equipment other than a rope. Using a trove of archival video, photos and audio recordings, “The Deepest Breath” follows Keenan and Zecchini on separate journeys to the top of the freediving world. What started as a trip down the YouTube rabbit hole became a six-year filmmaking journey resulting in “ The Deepest Breath,” a gripping documentary, now streaming on Netflix, that tells a tale of underwater tragedy and arrives as the implosion of the Titan submersible remains fresh in the public memory. “I’d try to hold my breath and then I’d gasp.” In 2017, Laura McGann read a story in the Irish Times about a fatal accident involving Alessia Zecchini, a preternaturally gifted freediver from Italy, and Stephen Keenan, a well regarded safety diver, at the Blue Hole near Dahab, Egypt - a notoriously dangerous submarine sinkhole nicknamed the “divers’ cemetery.”Įven though the Irish filmmaker didn’t know a thing about freediving - “At one point I googled ‘What is freediving,’” she said - she was immediately intrigued by the “incredible images of people behaving more like seals or dolphins, just holding their breath underwater, swimming endlessly.” She couldn’t resist trying it herself, but quickly discovered her lung capacity was less impressive. This story contains spoilers from the documentary “The Deepest Breath.”
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