In 2019, director Alex Parkinson released Last Breath, a documentary chronicling diver Chris Lemons’ first descent 330 feet beneath the North Sea. After days of breathing a specialized gas mixture to acclimate to the brutally inhospitable conditions awaiting him, Chris is about to take on one of the world’s most dangerous jobs: repairing miles of pipeline on the ocean floor—the very infrastructure that, we’re told, keeps regular Joe Schmoes warm through the winter. He and his crew expect to be cut off from the air-breathing world for a full 28-day cycle: a few days of acclimatization, long underwater shifts divided among three teams of three, and a final three-day decompression period. But rough seas and a sudden power outage turn their routine work tour into a desperate underwater rescue when Chris’ umbilical cable is severed, leaving him trapped 100 meters below the surface—without enough oxygen to survive until help arrives. Now, in 2025, Parkinson returns to the same harrowing tale, this time adapting Last Breath as a feature film.
