S23 - Ep 1 - Last Breath: From Documentary to Feature Film

What happens when the director of a documentary returns years later to retell the same story as a feature film?

This week on Below the Line, Skid talks with Director Alex Parkinson about Last Breath, first made as a 2019 documentary and now released as a feature film starring Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, and Finn Cole.

We talk through:

• How Alex first discovered the real-life story of diver Chris Lemons and shaped it into a documentary built around five minutes of chilling ROV footage
• The deliberate choice to hide Chris’s survival in the documentary — and how the feature film shifted perspective to follow him underwater
• Blurring lines between documentary and reconstruction, and carrying that visual style into the feature by weaving real footage with staged material
• The long road to directing his first feature, convincing producers through lookbooks and rewrites that he could expand his own documentary into a drama
• Building a crew from scratch and attracting world-class talent, including underwater DP Ian Seabrook, who signed on after watching the documentary
• The critical role of First AD Jude Campbell in organizing the complex underwater schedule and keeping the production on track
• Filming in Malta’s massive water tank and on full-scale ship sets designed to preserve authenticity and claustrophobia
• Working with Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, and Finn Cole to ground their performances in the documentary while making the feature cinematic

What emerges is a story about continuity and transformation — a director returning to familiar material but reimagining it at a different scale, with different tools, and for a wider audience.

🎧 Press play and go Below the Line on Last Breath. For more, visit belowtheline.biz.