Unconscious. Eyes wide but unfocused. The blackout. The freediver’s head is cradled by an attending safety diver frantically trying to restart their breathing. This seems to be a familiar occurrence in the world of competitive freediving. The razor thin margin between victory and death.
The feature length documentary The Deepest Breath has just released on Netflix. It follows the intercepting story of Italian Freediving world champion Alessia Zecchini and safety diver Stephen Keenan.
Freediving is a ripe subject for a documentary. There’s something primal and almost childlike about athletes attempting to swim the deepest, the furthest or stay down the longest. At its core it’s fundamentally pointless: to risk your life for very little, bar recognition and personal achievement. All in all, it’s a very human pursuit. The Deepest Breath is a beautiful, fascinating, and moving film that examines the characters that do it.
Alessia is fiery and competitive. She has a burning drive from an early age to imitate her idol, Russian freediving legend Natalia Molchanova, and break multiple women’s world records. The film charts her progress from child prodigy to world champion. Stephen’s story runs in parallel – a nomadic traveller who finally finds his home in Dahab, Egpyt, as a freediving instructor and safety diver. When the two meet they form a deep bond becoming teacher and student.
The documentary captures the personal drive, obsession and acceptance of risk the athletes are willing to take to achieve their goals. However, it somehow feels deeper, more soulful, than pure competitiveness.
The dangers of competitive freediving are laid bare throughout the film. The ascent blackout, caused by the drop in the partial pressure of oxygen during the ascent, is an ever present threat. It’s responding to this threat that made Keenan’s name as a safety diver, recovering freedivers at international competitions. Like freediving itself, a blackout is not frantic but serene and calm. There’s no thrashing or struggling; the brain appears to simply turn off. For the viewer that makes it no less disconcerting to see an open-eyed lifeless body be revived on the surface.
You get the impression death is never far away and they know it. It’s lurking close even to the most experienced, including Alessia’s hero Molchanova who died during a routine training dive in Spain. I remember seeing French freediver and world record holder Loic Leferme speak at a Dive Show and soon after he too was dead, again from an accident while training.
It’s the juxtaposition: the absolute calm required to operate so close to death that makes it so fascinating. The footage is dreamlike. It drags you down to the depths alongside the divers with miraculous long tracking shots. You can feel the isolation and inner calm of the athletes.
I would have liked to have seen more background and history around the sport of freediving to help contextualise the subject. The documentary focused largely on the characters and their backstories. I don’t freedive but I know a few and have an understanding of the sport but I wanted to know more. There’s no real mention of how the sport started, developed or an explanation of the different disciplines (the most extreme form, No Limits, isn’t discussed at all).
The film climaxes with Alissia and Stephen drawn together for a record attempt at Dahab’s Blue Hole. If you don’t know the story I won’t ruin the ending but needless to say the Blue Hole, with all of its history, is an ominous location to finish any freediving film.
The Deepest Breath is available to stream now on Netflix
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