When Irish director Laura McGann first got the call to say her documentary, The Deepest Breath, was to premiere at Sundance Film Festival, she thought she was being rejected.
The film, featuring Irish diver Stephan Keenan, is being released on Netflix all around the world today.
When Irish director Laura McGann first got the call that her documentary, The Deepest Breath, was to premiere at Sundance Film Festival, she believed the event organisers were calling to reject her.
"I didn't hear him properly," she told The Pat Kenny Show, "I thought maybe he was ringing to say, 'You didn't get in'."
This, as it turns out, was not the case – Ms McGann was to have her international premiere in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the largest independent film festival in the United States.
"It was incredibly surreal in Utah, -20 degrees, with our film – it was amazing," she said.
The film – which was written and directed by Ms McGann – profiles Italian freediver Alessia Zecchini on her quest to break a world record with the help of Irish safety diver Stephan Keenan.
"I read about Stephen and Alessia in The Irish Times," she said.
"This is a story of two people who just seemed destined to come together and do incredible things."
From the age of 13-years-old, Ms McGann said Ms Zecchini had the dream of being a freediver.
"In a nutshell, free diving is when you hold your breath, and you put your head under the water," Ms McGann said.
"In this case, in this film, they go down and dive deep down into the sea ... freediving is diving as deep as you can and competitive freediving is that the deepest diver in the competition wins.
"You would think that being down at 100 metres, you'd be in more danger but it's usually in the last 10 metres of a dive that your body starts to realise, as your lungs inflate again, that you haven't got as much oxygen as it thought."
Alessia Zecchini Italian freediver, world record holder in six disciplines of freediving during the second day of the Rieti Sport Festival in Rieti, Italy on 11 June 2021. (Photo by Riccardo Fabi/NurPhoto)The Blue Hole
The film outlines Ms Zecchini and Mr Keenan's love for freediving, along with the risks they were willing to take for the sport.
"The Blue Hole – that's where the culmination of the film happens," Ms McGann told the show.
"The Blue Hole is a 100-metre sinkhole just off the coast of Egypt – down at about 50 metres there's a tunnel called The Arch, [which is] a 30-metre tunnel.
"That's one of the most challenging free dives you can do."
The freediver moves underwater near the coral reef at the depth of Blue Hole, Egypt ( Sergey Orlov / Alamy Stock Photo)Over a bowl of porridge this morning with her daughter, all of Ms McGann's hard work on The Deepest Breath finally came to an end.
"I turned on Netflix and saw it on the homepage," she said, "We took a little selfie with it."
"That's for today. As for tomorrow? I'm looking at a few other projects at the moment that are in development and are in their early, early, early stages."
The Deepest Breath is available to watch on Netflix from Wednesday 19 July.
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Main image shows The Deepest Breath. (L to R) Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan in The Deepest Breath. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
