Free diving is dangerous — in fact, some of the most famous dive sites are considered deadlier than Mount Everest. The sport looks a lot like scuba diving, but without the scuba tank that allows divers to breathe underwater. Instead, athletes take on rigorous training to learn how to hold their breath for long periods of time. (Professionals are underwater for more than three minutes.) Sometimes this results in gruesome injuries, including “lung squeezes,” when the lungs suffer from a quick change in pressure that can cause them to rupture or collapse. Needless to say, training to be the best in the world at this sport requires physical strength, mental determination, and an unwavering trust both in the people around you and in the water itself.
Filmmaker Laura McGann’s documentary The Deepest Breath — a collaboration with A24, Motive Films, Ventureland, and RAW — tells the story of two free divers and their fated journey to cross paths: a champion trying to break world records and a beloved safety diver who helps her train. The film also gives the audience a stunning view inside the world of free diving itself, with extended scenes shot below the surface that are somehow both teeth-grittingly tense and beautifully serene.
“There was almost something otherworldly about it, almost spiritual,” McGann told Tudum in January. “I could feel that there was just an at-oneness that these people had, that they were so relaxed and they were just meant to be there. It was really gentle — but also powerful and hard to believe.”
The film opens with a spectacular shot of a diver descending into the depths, methodically making their way down through the water. But then, the light dims, and those watching are hit with the keen awareness of how long, exactly, this diver has been under the water. In the blackness of the ocean, all you can see is the diver — and all you can hear is the sound of an ever-slowing heartbeat.
“That’s what you hear,” McGann said of the divers’ experience. “You hear your own heartbeat. Everything slows as you conserve oxygen in your body. We wanted to represent that.”
Coming up for air after that first harrowing scene, The Deepest Breath begins, and at the heart of the story are Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan.
Early scientists believed that human beings were incapable of diving deeper than 38 meters, or 125 feet. But modern divers routinely go much, much further (the deepest human dive, using weights, was lower than 200 meters), thanks to a cluster of biological mechanisms that kick in called the mammalian dive reflex. First understood in the ’60s, the mammalian dive reflex allows divers to conserve oxygen, slow heart rates, and survive for long durations underwater despite crushing degrees of atmospheric pressure.
The Deepest Breath tells the story of Zecchini, an Italian free diving champion with countless awards and records in the sport. In fact, she’s so dominant that she often competes against herself, breaking her own records with each successful dive. In March 2023, she set a new world record for free diving with two fins in constant buoyancy, descending to a depth of 109 meters in the waters of Moalboal, Philippines.
Each dive varies, and for all competitors in the sport, some dives are more successful than others. The Deepest Breath touches on the techniques free divers use to train and dive, including segmented breathing (a training process that involves breaking inhales and exhales into sections by suspending one’s breath) and “lung packing,” during which divers force air into the lungs via muscle contractions that mimic swallowing. Setting her latest world record in Moalboal, Zecchini was able to hold her breath for a shocking three minutes and 38 seconds.
Despite the intense breathing exercises, McGann said that the sport also requires a level of calm and focus that most might not associate with an extreme sport.
“You have to be in a meditative state,” McGann told Tudum. “You can’t be full of adrenaline. You have to calm your heart rate, then calm your mind to complete quiet so you’re not having any thoughts. It’s like deep meditation.”
The film chronicles Zecchini’s rise in the free diving world, a dream that she’s carried since childhood. After traveling to Dahab, Egypt, to attempt one of the world’s most dangerous dives, she meets adventurer and Irish record-setting free diver Stephen Keenan, one of the foremost safety specialists in the field and the owner and founder of a diving school in Dahab. Sparks fly, and Zecchini ends up staying in Dahab with Keenan. The pair work toward the goal of Zecchini breaking a particularly treacherous world record.
Born and raised in Glasnevin, Ireland, Keenan lived a life of travel and adventure before settling in Dahab and opening a free diving school. Beloved by his peers and well respected in the sport, Keenan acted as a safety diver for countless dives. The Deepest Breath recalls Keenan’s affection for Zecchini when she arrived in Dahab and how he helped her train for her Blue Hole dive.
Located off the coast of Dahab, the Blue Hole is an 85-foot-long tunnel that sits 184 feet below the Red Sea. The location is reputed to have the most diver fatalities in the world, often credited to its unique geological structure; the tunnel is called “the Arch,” and while it’s a particularly spectacular stretch of underwater rock, it also prevents divers from surfacing for a depth of about 250 meters.
Given that free diving is one of the most dangerous sports in the world, it may come as no surprise that McGann’s film has an element of tragedy. The last act of the film documents the fateful day of Zecchini’s dive into the Blue Hole with Keenan as her safety diver. What happens is devastating, but McGann says that telling the story the way she did — however painful it may be — was crucial in honoring the film’s subjects.
“Some of the athletes there that day said was that it wasn’t just one thing that went wrong — there were 50,” McGann told Tudum. “There were so many little details that were shifted slightly, that resulted in this outcome. You don’t walk through life knowing what’s going to happen in six weeks time or in seven years time. You walk through life and you do not know what’s around the next corner. And neither did Stephen or Alessia. And I just wanted to bring the audience on that journey.”
Watch The Deepest Breath on Netflix now.
