January 27

As we enter the final five days of January, we are coming down to the last documentaries in the Genre-ary. The doc I selected for tonight was a harrowing tale of survival under the most unlikely of circumstances. I watched the doc called Last Breath on Netflix.

This doc was released in 2019, and there is actually a big budget movie set to release at the end of February starring Woody Harrelson about this very story.

According to IMDB, “A deep sea diver is stranded on the seabed with 5 minutes of oxygen and no hope of rescue. With access to amazing archive this is the story of one man’s impossible fight for survival.“

Diver Chris Lemons had his umbilical cable severed during a saturation dive and he was stranded around 100 meters beneath the sea. Somehow, Chris was able to survive for around 30 minutes on the five minutes of oxygen that he had.

The doc is an absolutely stunning accomplishment as it uses real footage from the moment, collected from body cameras and actual radio audio to tell this story. It spoke with the other crew members who were desperate to find Chris before it was too late, but who were fearful that it was already past time.

It was amazing to see these images of Chris atop the structure in the unlikely position among the blackness of the sea. It was powerful watching them pull Chris into the vessel and giving him two deep breaths. They did not believe that they were going to be able to save Chris, and yet they never gave up in their attempt.

This documentary has made me more interested in the movie coming in February, where I had limited interest before.