Making a documentary chronicling the events of the infamous Thai cave rescue mission was no easy feat for filmmakers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, especially because they hadn’t been on the ground to capture what was transpiring after 12 kids were stuck in a flooding cave in 2018.
Instead of just using footage from other news outlets who had been there, the “Free Solo” filmmakers decided to have the actual divers from that fateful retrieval reenact their mission, and the filmmakers negotiated with Thai Navy SEALs to release footage they had filmed.
“It’s footage from news cameras — we’re piecing together a CNN shot and a local Thai news shot and together, they make a scene — but we decided to do reenactments with the actual divers, reenacting the events,” Vasarhelyi told TheWrap’s Editor in Chief Sharon Waxman in a video interview during the Toronto International Film Festival.
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