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.
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