Freediver Director on Chronicling Alexey Molchanov’s 2023 World Record

Posted in: Documentary, Interview, Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: Alexey Molchanov, Freediver, Michael John Warren, paramount

Michael John Warren (Best Shot) spoke to Bleeding Cool about his latest documentary on Alexey Molchanov’s life in Paramount’s Freediver.

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Like his subjects, Michael John Warren is always looking for ways to challenge himself, whether it’s the grand stage on Broadway, Lollapalooza, or chronicling the modern-day daredevils like the bullfighters in Netflix’s Fearless. His latest is a documentary for Paramount Pictures Freediver, which covers the journey of Alexey Molchanov, a professional freediver and Russian expatriate in exile looking to build on a family legacy of his mother and legendary freediver Natalia Molchanova, trying to set a world record. Based on the GQ article Secrets of the Deep by Daniel Riley, the documentary covers his time spending 2023 on a journey to reclaim his athletic glory and honor his iconic mother’s towering legacy by attempting the most dominant season in the history of the deadly sport. His near-suicidal quest to set five world records in under four months brings him to the farthest reaches of the globe to the very edges of human performance. In the process, he’s forced to reevaluate all the skills and beliefs on which he has built his entire life. Warren spoke to Bleeding Cool about how the younger Molchanov’s story fascinated him, setting a cinematic record himself for the extreme dive and the risks should the worst have happened.

Freediver Director Michael John Warren on Alexey Molchanov’s Comeback Story

Bleeding Cool: What inspired you to tell the story of Alexey [Molchanov] and his journey?

There was an article in GQ that came out a few years back. Some of my friends at Boardwalk Pictures in Los Angeles sent me this and asked, “Read this article. Do you want to make a film about it, because if you do, we do?” I read it, and my mouth dropped. I couldn’t believe it was true. I thought about the science of what happens when you dive hundreds of feet underwater without any oxygen and what you put your body through. This is not scuba diving but free diving. You take a breath; you go down. No one’s there to save you, and your body does incredible stuff. On a science level, I was fascinated. More importantly, the story of Alexey, his family, and what he was trying to do was complicated and nuanced. I knew we had a great story and thought the technical challenge sounded fun. I’m at a stage in my career where I’m looking for new challenges because I’ve done a lot at this point, and I’m looking for things I haven’t done yet. This film ticked all those boxes we jumped in, and I’m proud of what we ended up with.

What are the biggest obstacles you encountered documenting this journey?

The biggest obstacle by far is filming hundreds of feet underwater. I don’t think it gets harder than that from a photography standpoint. The ocean is unforgiving. It doesn’t care who you are or what you’re trying to do. It’s the ocean, and there’s been some shallow water photography in the past, but this is happening at like one point where at 512 ft underwater as Alexei’s setting, which my film team and I believe is the world record. I’m positive that it’s a world record for the deepest image of a human in the open water ever achieved on anything other than a GoPro.

These cinema cameras we have down there that capture the action in a way that will be read on the biggest movie screen. Figuring it all out, we had to combine existing technologies to pull that off. A cable camera, scuba team, and robot are going down there at 500 ft. It’s about as hard as it gets. We set a world record with it, and then above the water, you’re also dealing with the ocean there. It’s not just under the water. There are changing currents and wind. When we were in the Philippines, we had a nasty brush with a super typhoon. We almost had to evacuate. We debated evacuating the island we were on because we weren’t sure what would happen. We decided it was safer to stay where we were than to go back along this narrow path back to a larger island. It was about the hardest. I’ve done a lot in my career. This is by far the hardest movie I’ve had to make is hard. As far as the technical and physical challenges.

How careful were you in planning this documentary? If Alexey died, would you still have released the film if his family had given their blessing?

We were very careful. I have been in a position in my documentary career where I have been documenting, portraying, and profiling people doing extremely dangerous things. Several years ago, I did a series for Netflix called ‘Fearless,’ which is about bull riding. It was one of the first times I had gotten to know a group of bull riders, and then I was hanging out, documenting, and getting to know them. We went to a big competition, and this person I had befriended gets on like, “Okay, I forget how much bulls weigh, but I don’t know, 800 pounds to a couple of tons, I don’t know.” These are enormous beasts, then the gate opens, they go out, and are so close to being paralyzed, killed, whatever it is, that I wanted to grab them and pull them back and tell them, “You don’t have to do this. We won’t make the show. Like, let’s not do that.”
I had experienced that feeling once before, and I felt it in this film. Alexey, every time he went down, my crew and I would go silent, and we wouldn’t really talk much. I’m directing as it’s happening, so I must talk, but there was a huge sigh of relief when he would come up. There’s one point where Alexey declares what he will do the next day, and it ends up becoming one of the most significant moments in the film when he announces what he will do that night. As we were getting ready for the shoot the next day, I couldn’t sleep.

I was like, “This is terrifying, and then the shoot happened.” It was a harrowing day, and then that night, I couldn’t sleep. I had multiple consecutive sleepless nights because of what Alexey was doing. Yes, I was prepared to photograph him dying, and yes, I probably would have been prepared to release the film if he had died. Alexey knows what he’s doing. He’s not crazy. That’s one thing that’s funny; people should understand that Alexey is not crazy. He’s thought through everything, and he’s made a decision. It’s not like I would have been exploiting someone who doesn’t understand the decisions they’re making. He totally understands that. We didn’t talk about that explicitly. Of course, I would have consulted his family. There would have been a lot of conversations with the studios and the production partners, but I don’t think I would have felt too big of a moral quandary had he died.

Freediver is available on digital.

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