Free Solo filmmakers on why Thai cave rescue movie The Rescue, about divers’ feat that captivated the world in 2018, was so difficult, and special, to create
- Filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin say their hearts were ‘just transported’ by the plight of the young soccer team trapped underground
- Piecing together a fractured story was particularly demanding, as was a lack of footage to begin with, say the pair who won an Oscar for climbing film Free Solo
When monsoon floodwaters trapped a team of young soccer players in a cave in Thailand in June 2018, their plight drew the attention of the world. The Rescue, a new documentary from Oscar-winning filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, shows the international effort behind freeing the team.
“Much like the whole world, we were fascinated by the story as it was happening,” Vasarhelyi says via Zoom from the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, where the National Geographic-produced film was recently screened, about why she and her husband Chin decided to make it.
“2018 was a very divided moment, and here was a story that was about what brought us together as opposed to what divided us. This was also a story about Asian kids. As parents of Asian children ourselves, our hearts were just transported by it.”
As the documentary shows, amateur cave divers from around the world searched flooded passages for evidence that the youths were still alive. Once they were found, they faced a harrowing journey to safety, as rescuers realised that the only way the players would survive underwater was if they were sedated.
This was the first film Vasarhelyi and Chin had worked on where they weren’t there for the principal events. “One of the challenges that we faced early on is that there was kind of no footage,” Chin says.
