In the underwater tragedy of Netflix’s ‘Deepest Breath,’ the appeal of the deep explained

This story contains spoilers from the documentary “The Deepest Breath.” In 2017, Laura McGann read a story in the Irish Times about a fatal accident involving Alessia Zecchini, a preternaturally gifted freediver from Italy, and Stephen Keenan, a well regarded safety diver, at the Blue Hole near Dahab, Egypt — a notoriously dangerous submarine sinkhole nicknamed the “divers’ cemetery.” Even though the Irish filmmaker didn’t know a thing about freediving — “At one point I googled ‘What is freediving,’” she said — she was immediately intrigued by the “incredible images of people behaving more like seals or dolphins, just holding their breath underwater, swimming endlessly.” She couldn’t resist trying it herself, but quickly discovered her lung capacity was less impressive. While it’s likely to induce panic attacks in anyone with thalassophobia, “The Deepest Breath” is also a stunning work of filmmaking that includes hypnotic shots of divers descending into the darkness and visceral, on-the-scene footage from diving competitions — like an underwater “Free Solo.” Speaking by phone from Ireland, McGann told The Times about the “magical” process of making the documentary. An image from “The Deepest Breath.” How did you get Stephen and Alessia’s friends and family involved in the documentary? “The Deepest Breath” on Netflix How did you decide to structure the narrative the way you did — following Stephen and Alessia’s journeys in tandem and only revealing at the end, when we see Alessia in an interview for the first time, that she survived the accident and he did not?