Laura McGann (‘The Deepest Breath’ director) on beauty and risk of free-diving: ‘I immediately thought this would look incredible on the big screen’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

“I didn’t know anything about it until recently,” reveals “The Deepest Breath” director Laura McGann, whose Netflix documentary tells the story of a champion and expert safety diver who seemed destined for one another. “I read about Stephen [Keenan] and Alessia [Zecchini] in 2017. I did have to Google, ‘What is free-diving?’ I spent the whole afternoon in this rabbit hole, watching videos of people holding their breath underwater for what felt like half a day, without the urge to breathe. I immediately thought, ‘This would look incredible on the big screen. How do we get this into the cinema?'”

We talked with McGann as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2023/2024 documentary film awards contenders. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

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“The connection between the people involved and the sea, and this incredible, meditative sport that is also quite dangerous and massively competitive, is fascinating,” she says. “It was one of those things where you kind of pull on a thread and this magical line just appeared.” While the risk involved in free-diving may seem unthinkable to many, the athletes involved don’t see it that way. “Maybe we’re risking our lives every day by crossing the road,” she says. “There’s a real high involved. In the film they talk about free fall, which is when you get down to 30 meters, the pressure above you pushes you down. It’s kind of like flying…There’s a list as long as my arm I could tell you why they do it, but really it’s just something soulful.”

McGann says she wanted viewers to feel “in the moment” while watching Stephen and Alessia’s stories. “We spoke to everybody,” she explains. “We figured out what the story was, because this wasn’t like an article that was written, it was very much finding the story and finding how Alessia and Stephen’s stories spoke to one another even before they met.” It then became a quest to find archival footage and the director admits “it was kind of incredible” how much they were able to collect.

“The Deepest Breath” is currently streaming on Netflix. The film was nominated for four Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, winning Best Sports Documentary and Best Cinematography (Tim Cragg).

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