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Now streaming on Prime Video, Thirteen Lives follows the incredible true story of the 2018 mission to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from Thailand's flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave system. Although global media widely covered the high-stakes events, director Ron Howard thrusts audiences into the chaotic center with the same intensity and attention to detail he brought to his other classic "true story" films, such as Apollo 13 and Rush.

With such a big-name filmmaker and a recognizable cast that includes Colin Farrell and Viggo Mortensen, it would be easy to assume Thirteen Lives is a glitzy, exaggerated dramatization. Thankfully, however, the survival film is impressively authentic and respectful, with the only exceptions being relatively small details and omissions.

Updated March 16, 2025, by Arthur Goyaz. Thirteen Lives is a hair-raising dramatization of a harrowing true story. This article is updated to include more related information about the movie and the...

Since beginning his career in the late 1990s, Irish actor Colin Farrell has been on a proverbial rollercoaster. Following a handful of early film and TV appearances, Farrell first gained the attention of Hollywood when he starred in Joel Schumacher’s 2000 war drama Tigerland. And his breakout role came in 2002 when he played Agent Danny Witwer in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report. His excellent work, good looks, and onscreen charisma quickly positioned Farrell as a potentially huge leading man. But a string of moderate successes, outright failures, and mixed critical responses with films like Phone Booth, Daredevil, S.W.A.T., Miami Vice, and the universally derided Alexander cooled the actor’s jets for a while, while Farrell also rode out some personal relationship drama and a trip to rehab.

He came out the other end of that phase with more managed expectations, transitioning from standard leading man fare to more wide-ranging character...

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In late 2018 — not long after John Volanthen and I helped free the 12 boys of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach, Ekkaphon Chanthawong, from the flooded caves in the Tham Luang cave system in July of that year — producers P.J. van Sandwijk and Gabrielle Tana approached me about making a film about the rescue mission. At the time, we had no idea who the director would be or what the screenplay would look like, but we began to talk to a script researcher for what would eventually become Thirteen Lives.

Once screenwriter William Nicholson was on board, director Ron Howard got involved and MGM decided to fund it. My diving partner and I had a Zoom call with Ron in which he shared his vision of what he wanted, and it was in September that Ron telephoned to say he’d gotten...

Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (he goes by “Sayo”) has distinguished himself over the last two decades as the cherished cinematographer of directors Luca Guadagnino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”).

And though the works by those filmmakers are renowned for their many gorgeous evocations of nature, whether sun-dappled countryside or dense foggy jungle, Mukdeeprom faced one of the biggest challenges of his career with “Thirteen Lives,” his first collaborations with Oscar-winner Ron Howard.

Dramatizing the implausible 2018 story of 12 boys and their soccer coach who became trapped deep in a flooded cave, “Thirteen Lives” is set entirely in Mukdeeprom’s native Thailand — though the movie was actually filmed, apart from a few establishing shots, in sets created on the Gold Coast of Australia.

“Actually the whole thing was all a set that had been built for us,” Mukdeeprom told TheWrap. “Which was an amazing thing to see.

“We had to get it right, because it’s their story,” declares sound designer Rachael Tate about portraying the 2018 Thai cave rescue.” For our recent webchat she explains, “The local Thai people spoke a very specific local Thai dialect so we made sure we recorded crowd that lived really near the cave.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

“Thirteen Lives” is about a group of young soccer players and their coach being rescued from flooded caves in Thailand. It is based on the 2018 real life events which made news around the world. The film is helmed by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”). It explored the events from the perspective of the rescuers such as John Volanthen (Colin Farrell) and uses a distinct filmmaking style to immerse the viewer in the narrow underwater caves.

SEERon Howard movies: 16 greatest films ranked from worst to best

Oliver Tarney and Tate did...

Ron Howard’s “Thirteen Lives” is the latest example of the director’s ability to generate riveting cinema from real-world headlines. Like “Apollo 13” and “Frost/Nixon,” it takes a historical event many audience members will have some awareness of — in this case the dramatic rescue of a Thai soccer team trapped in an underwater cave — and brings it to vivid life, creating nail-biting suspense despite the outcome being common knowledge. The key to the film’s effectiveness is its rigorous attention to detail and meticulous sense of research and journalistic accuracy, qualities evident in every craft on display.

In the videos below, supervising sound editors Rachael Tate and Oliver Tarney, re-recording mixer William Miller, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, production designer Molly Hughes, and editor James Wilcox discuss how they preserved the authenticity of the story that inspired “Thirteen Lives” while also using all the tools of drama and cinema — including...

“I learned that nothing is impossible,” declares cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom about making “Thirteen Lives.” For our recent webchat he clarifies, “I know so much is impossible, but at the beginning I was not quite sure how to be real in the environment Hollywood thematics would have demanded. But then we made it. Unbelievable!” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

“Thirteen Lives” is a film from two-time Oscar winner Ron Howard about a group of young soccer players and their coach being rescued from a flooded caves in Thailand. It is based on 2018 real life events which made news around the world.

SEERon Howard movies: 16 greatest films ranked from worst to best

As the movie’s Dp, Mukdeeprom explains, “The story is so well known in the world. People at least know something about it. You are dealing with something where people have information in their head. If you twist it,...

Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives–starring Colin Farrell and Viggo Mortensen as real-life divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton, respectively–dramatizes the harrowing 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue. The event is remembered for having united people from all over the globe to achieve the improbable. With its dynamic editing and comprehensive, multifaceted breakdown of the rescue effort, Howard’s movie is a hymn to the same spirit of collaboration and creative thinking.

Amazon Prime Video continues to roll out a mix of movies for its ongoing summer slate. In the peak month of the season, viewers will be able to access some major recent releases like Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” starring the Haim sisters as well as “The Lost City,” which is loaded with stars like Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe and Brad Pitt.

Those looking for older classic films won’t be disappointed either as Meryl Streep-studded “The Devil Wears Prada,” and “Mamma Mia! ”will also head to the streamer (with the musical gracing Freevee’s catalog). Nicholas Cage’s “Face/Off” and the late James Caan’s “Thief” arrive August 1 along with “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” which stars the late Paul Sorvino’s daughter Mira. Don’t count out “Grey’s Anatomy” alums Sandra Oh and Kate Walsh in “Under the Tuscan Sun” either.

For those who like true story films,...

With “Thirteen Lives,” Ron Howard delivers his cinematic interpretation of the story of the stranded Thai soccer team that commanded the world’s attention in the early summer of 2018. Howard’s film joins other projects — including the 2021 National Geographic documentary “The Rescue” and Netflix’s upcoming limited series “Thai Cave Rescue” — that covered the incredible true story of the skilled divers that rescued the team.

The screenplay comes from “Unbroken” and “Everest” screenwriter William Nicholson. Producers include P.J. van Sandwijk, Gabrielle Tana, Karen Lunder, William M. Connor, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. Executive producers include Jon Kuyper, Carolyn Marks Blackwood, Marie Savare, Michael Lesslie, Aaron L. Gilbert and Jason Cloth.

For fans of Ron Howard or those still fascinated by the suspenseful true story, here’s how to watch “Thirteen Lives”:

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Here’s What’s New on Amazon Prime Video in August 2022 When Does “Thirteen Lives” Premiere?...

Watching “Thirteen Lives, Ron Howard’s new docudrama, is a lot like having deja vu all over again — all over again. It’s the third film in four years based on the seemingly impossible rescue of 12 trapped children and their soccer coach from a flooded cave system in Thailand in 2018, and although it’s extremely competent, it fails to add a new perspective to the story or a distinctive approach to its telling.

Hot on the heels of Tom Waller’s 2019 drama “The Cave” and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s award-winning 2021 documentary “The Rescue,” Howard’s film stars Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell as Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, two highly experienced cave divers who traveled to the Tham Luang Nang Non cave after an unexpectedly early start to monsoon season trapped 13 people deep in its recesses, behind incredibly long, narrow, dangerous underwater caverns.

The Thai government had...

(L to R) Colin Farrell as John Volanthen, Viggo Mortensen as Rick Stanton and Sahajak ‘Poo’ Boonthanakit as Governor Naronsak in Thirteen Lives, directed by Ron Howard, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Vince Valitutti / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures © 2022 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When a Thai boys soccer team was trapped in a cave by flash flooding in 2018, the world was riveted as divers attempted to locate and rescue the teenage boys and their coach in the flooded cave, ultimately calling in volunteers who specialized in cave diving. Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell play two of those cave divers, middle-aged hobbyists who travel from their homes in the U.K. to volunteer to help save the boys and their coach. As the days dragged on, hope faded and it seemed only a miracle could save them. Thirteen Lives dramatizes that 2018 rescue mission, and demonstrates exactly how miraculous it was.

The movie "Thirteen Lives" is about a group of 12 boys and their soccer coach who find themselves trapped deep in a network of caves after flooding blocks their way out. The group is eventually rescued by a team of divers who undertake the dangerous journey to find and rescue them.

The film's plot is based on a real event that happened not too long ago. On June 23, 2018, 12 boys between the ages of 11 and 16 and their assistant coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, went missing while exploring Tham Luang Nang Non, a complex of caves stretching between Thailand and Myanmar. They planned to celebrate a player's birthday in the caves, which they often explored, but the team found themselves stranded instead when a torrential rainstorm led to a flood that blocked their exit.

During their time in the cave, the team survived by drinking the water dripping down the walls and by digging a...

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When Colin Farrell heard that his Thirteen Lives co-star Viggo Mortensen wanted to do the film’s grueling underwater scenes himself rather than rely on a stunt double, he couldn’t resist diving in behind him.

“I couldn’t have Viggo take all the glory,” Farrell joked to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday night at the premiere of the Ron Howard-directed film. “I might have to blame Viggo for that decision but, you know, in for a penny in for a pound. If Viggo’s in, I’m in.”

Easier said than done.

Thirteen Lives, now in select theaters from MGM/UA before a global Prime Video debut on Aug. 5, recounts the true story of an unprecedented global effort to rescue a Thai soccer team after they became trapped in the Tham Luang cave during an unexpected rainstorm. A collective consisting of...

Viggo Mortensen implemented a “Dangerous Method” on set for Ron Howard’s “Thirteen Lives.”

The thrice Oscar-nominated actor recalled barely being able to breathe when filming “Thirteen Lives,” telling the story of the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue of 12 youth soccer players and their assistant coach who were trapped after a rainstorm. Mortensen portrays real-life hero Richard Stanton, with Colin Farrell as fellow rescue diver John Volanthen. Joel Edgerton, Tom Bateman, and Paul Gleeson also star in the film, released July 29 in theaters before launching globally on Prime Video August 5.

“All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe,” Mortensen told People. “It seemed like a long time, but it was only a matter of seconds. I panicked.”

In that moment, Mortensen remembered Stanton’s training to switch the mouthpiece to the oxygen tank and breathe using the second tank. “It’s not that complicated,” Mortensen added. “But at the moment, it’s hard to think clearly.

Over the course of an engaging (if inevitably repetitive) two and a half hours, “Thirteen Lives” reenacts the incredible rescue effort that captured the world’s attention for several weeks in the summer of 2018: Twelve boys and the assistant coach of a Thai soccer team went exploring the Tham Luang cave when an unforeseen rainstorm forced them deeper and deeper. What should have been a reasonably easy hike instead became a near-death experience, as rising waters and an early monsoon season left them stranded for days, until a handful of the world’s most experienced divers arrived on the scene.

International news coverage ensured that audiences around the globe were aware of the situation, but far fewer know just what it took to get those kids to safety — which explains why this feel-good story has inspired multiple films, from “The Rescue” to “The Cave,” with an even more “authentic...

Netflix will on September 22 release its long-gestating drama about the real-life rescue of 12 boys and an adult who were trapped in a cave in northern Thailand. Thai Cave Rescue will show how the Wild Boars soccer team’s afternoon exploring with their 25-year-old coach went disastrously wrong when heavy rain trapped them inside, leading to a massive international recovery mission that engrossed the world.

Netflix partnered with filmmakers across Thailand and beyond to create the six-episode series, which is filmed entirely in the Asian nation, after jointly acquiring rights to the story with Sk Global Entertainment back in 2019. The drama unfolds through the perspectives of the boys at the center of the rescue.

Created by Michael Russell Gunn and Dana Ledoux Miller, the limited series is directed by Thailand’s Baz Poonpiriya and U.S. director Kevin Tancharoen. Both also serve as executive producers alongside Jon M. Chu and Lance Johnson for Electric Somewhere; John Penotti (Crazy Rich Asians) for Sk Global Entertainment; John Logan Pierson.

Cast includes Papangkorn “Beam” Lerkchaleampote as Coach Eak, Thaneth “Ek” Warakulnukroh as Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osottanakorn, and Urassaya “Yaya” Sperbund and Manatsanun “Donut” Phanlerdwongsakul as Kelly and Pim — fictional representatives of the real-world hydraulic engineers and park rangers that made the incredible rescue possible. Supakorn “Tok” Kitsuwan is former Navy Seal diver Saman “Ja Sam” Gunan, and Bloom Varin plays army doctor Colonel Bhak Loharjun.

The boys are played by 12 young local actors, with filming taking place at the homes of the real boys and Tham Luang, where they were trapped, itself.

As with the real mission, Thai Cave Rescue international actors to portray key contributors in this rescue, including Nicholas Bell as Vern Unsworth, Nicholas Farnell as John Volanthen, Christopher Stollery as Rick Stanton, Rodger Corser as Dr. Richard “Harry” Harris, and Damon Herriman as Dr. Craig Challen.

“Thai Cave Rescue is the first opportunity for audiences worldwide to see the Tham Luang story in a new and more emotional light — centering the perspectives of the 12 Wild Boars, Coach Eak, and heroes like Saman ‘Ja Sam’ Gunan, whose lives beyond the operation remain largely outside the public spotlight,” said Poonpiriya.

Tancharoen added: “As a Thai American, I feel so incredibly fortunate to help tell this story through the lens and soul of the Thaipeople. I wanted to bring my experience of telling big superhero stories to the real world. One where real-life superheroes worked together for a common cause regardless of where they were from, and the only superpowers are the perseverance of the human spirit and what we can accomplish when we work together.”

Ron Howard and MGM’s Thai cave rescue film Thirteen Lives is set for its theatrical debut on Friday (July 29). Read Todd McCarthy’s review here. The story was also told in Nat Geo documentary The Rescue last year and in indie film The Cave back in 2019.

Netflix has set a Sept. 22 release date for “Thai Cave Rescue,” its six-part mini series about the dramatic events of July 2018 when 12 boys and their football coach were trapped in flooded limestone caves near Chiang Rai.

Their plight sparked an unprecedented international rescue effort that ended with the loss of just one life and a flurry of film and TV productions.

The Netflix series is at least the fourth on-screen retelling of the rescue tale and will follow two other efforts releasing over the next weeks. Netflix touts its series as “the most authentic and expansive retelling yet.”

First into the market, in 2019, was “The Cave,” by Thai-British director-producer Tom Waller, which mixed reconstructions and news footage. It gave prominent position to Europe-based rescue diver Jim Warny playing himself. And it broke ground by clearly depicting the controversial decision to fully sedate the boys during their extraction. Despite pushback from provincial officials,...

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Netflix’s long in the works series about the miraculous 2018 cave rescue of Thailand’s Wild Boars youth soccer team finally has a launch date. The six-episode limited series Thai Cave Rescue will release on the streaming service worldwide on Sept. 22.

Filmed entirely in Thailand, the show tells the real-life story of the 12 young Thai soccer players and their 25-year-old coach after they became stuck in a vast underground cave complex near the Myanmar border. The story unfolds from the perspectives of the boys themselves, as well as the experiences of their families and the vast global team that came together to save them.

Thai Cave Rescue is one of several screen projects to tackle the sensational story. Ron Howard’s Hollywood film version, Thirteen Lives, starring Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell and Joel Edgerton is getting a limited theatrical release this Friday ahead...

The only real problem with Thirteen Lives, an engrossing account of the rescue of 12 Thai boys and their coach from desperate straits when they become stranded in perilous caves during a monsoon, is that the same story was just recounted in the documentary The Rescue last fall. Yes, of course, big-budget feature films starring known actors can draw a lot more customers than do docs. But the fact that Ron Howard’s sometimes stirring new drama will only be in theaters for a week before it starts streaming August 5 will vastly diminish the number of people who might otherwise have experienced this stirring tale on the big screen, where it was clearly designed by Howard and his colleagues to be seen. Too bad, because it’s a fulsome film, both emotionally and as a production.

Telluride Review: ‘The Rescue’

The Rescue was a very high-profile documentary, and deservedly so, as...

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The first trailer for Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives, about the rescue mission to save 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooding Thai cave, has been released.

Colin Farrell and Mortensen play divers John Volanthen and Richard Stanton, respectively. The two men were part of the 2018 rescue mission that found all 13 people alive about 2.5 miles from the cave mouth. Various options for extracting the group were discussed, but as the rain began to pick up, the rescue team decided to extract the boys one by one by rendering them unconscious and swimming through the tunnels with them. Jason Mallinson (played by Paul Gleeson in the film), Chris Jewell (Tom Bateman), Richard Harris (Joel Edgerton) and Craig Challen were also part of the mission.

Between July 8 and 10, all of the boys were rescued from the cave. The rescue effort involved more than...

The international rescue effort of a Thai soccer team in 2018 is now at the core of Ron Howard’s gripping epic based on the incredible true story.

Oscar-winner Howard directs “Thirteen Lives” centered on the mission to bring back 12 boys and their soccer coach who became trapped in the Tham Luang cave during an unexpected rainstorm. Colin Farrell and Viggo Mortensen portray real-life rescue divers John Volanthen and Richard Stanton, respectively, with Joel Edgerton, Tom Bateman, and Paul Gleeson also starring. “Thirteen Lives,” penned by William Nicholson, will premiere in theaters for one week starting July 29 before launching globally on Prime Video August 5.

The official logline reads: “Faced with insurmountable odds, a team of the world’s most skilled and experienced divers, uniquely able to navigate the maze of flooded, narrow cave tunnels, join with Thai forces and more than 10,000 volunteers to attempt a harrowing rescue of the twelve boys and their coach.

Ron Howard is recreating the harrowing 2018 Thai cave rescue. In the first trailer for Prime Video's Thirteen Lives, Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen and Joel Edgerton play the expert cave divers who rescued 12 soccer players and their coach from the flooded Tham Luang cave system in Thailand. As the men plan out their dive, Colin's character John Volanthen warns, "It looks easy but when it's flooded, it's impossible."  And their mission to save all 13 people is made all the more difficult by non-stop rain and high water levels, which prevent the boys from swimming out of the cave. The only way the divers can remove the boys safely was by sedating them and...

Prime Video has released the trailer for Ron Howard’s upcoming film Thirteen Lives. The film hits select theaters exclusively for one week on July 29, Launching globally on Prime Video on August 5.

The film stars Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton, Tom Bateman, Paul Gleeson, Pattrakorn Tungsupakul, Tui Thiraphat Sajakul, James Teeradon Supapunpinyo, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Weir Sukollawat Kanaros.

Thirteen Lives recounts the incredible true story of the tremendous global effort to rescue a Thai soccer team who become trapped in the Tham Luang cave during an unexpected rainstorm. Faced with insurmountable odds, a team of the world’s most skilled and experienced divers – uniquely able to navigate the maze of flooded, narrow cave tunnels – join with Thai forces and more than 10,000 volunteers to attempt a harrowing rescue of the twelve boys and their coach. With impossibly high stakes and the entire world watching, the group embarks on their most challenging dive yet,...

"Just a crazy idea..." Amazon has revealed the first official trailer for Thirteen Lives, the Ron Howard fictionalized movie version of the Thailand cave rescue story from 2018. Everyone knows the story! It was headline news for weeks, and they just released an award-winning documentary last year called The Rescue. Howard gives it the Apollo 13 treatment by turning it into a seriously intense feature film. A rescue mission is assembled in Thailand where a group of young boys and their soccer coach are trapped in a system of underground caves that are flooding. A team of world-class divers navigate through miles of dangerous cave networks to discover that finding the boys is only the beginning... The cast features Viggo Mortensen as Richard Stanton, Colin Farrell as John Volanthen, Joel Edgerton as Richard Harris, an anaesthetist, plus a Thai cast featuring Sukollawat Kanarot, Thiraphat Sajakul, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Vithaya Pansringarm, Teeradon Supapunpinyo, & Nophand Boonyai.

Amazon and MGM have debuted the trailer for the retelling of the real-life story ‘Thirteen Lives.’

The story focuses on the real-life story of the boy’s football team from Thailand who became trapped in a cave for more than two weeks when heavy rains partially flooded the cave, blocking their way out.

All twelve of the boys were rescued along with their 25-year-old coach, though the effort claimed the life of a retired Thai Navy Seal, Saman Kunan, who ran out of air while saving the kids. Another rescue diver died a year and a half later as a result of a blood infection contracted during the rescue.

To celebrate the global launch of the trailer, director Ron Howard and members of the cast including Colin Farrell and Viggo Mortensen amongst others came together to open up and express their honour in being able to take part in retelling...

Prime Video has released the first trailer for the ripped-from-the-headlines drama “Thirteen Lives,” Ron Howard’s upcoming film about the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue.

In June and July 2018, the members of a junior football team were trapped for 18 days in Thailand’s Tham Luang Nang Non cave, after heavy rainfall flooded the cave system and blocked their way out. As the team – who ranged in age from 11-16 years old – and their coach remained trapped for weeks, the situation attracted global interest and an international rescue team was assembled to locate them. Howard’s film will chronicle the events of the rescue, focusing on the efforts of the divers to save the trapped team members.

Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell lead the ensemble cast as Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, the British cave divers who volunteered their expertise to help find the group alongside anesthetist Harry Harris (Joel Edgerton) and...

Help wanted: seeking anesthesiologist with world-class cave diving skills and experience in underwater rescues. Volunteer position.

If a job listing like that went out, it’s hard to imagine anyone with the necessary background to apply. Fortunately, one person ticks off all those boxes and more – his name, Dr. Richard “Harry” Harris. The mild-mannered Australian physician stepped up when all those abilities were called for – urgently – after 12 young members of a Thai soccer team and their coach became stranded in a flooded cave in the summer of 2018.

Dr. Harris – Harry, as he prefers to be called – flew to Northern Thailand to join an ad hoc team of British amateur cave divers, Thai government officials, Thai Navy SEALs, and American military personnel hastily assembled for a mission with very poor odds of success. The heroic endeavor is told in The Rescue, the National Geographic documentary directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and...

Documentary filmmakers often come across people with great footage, but the story is lacking. That wasn’t the case for married filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Emmy for directing the exhilarating 2018 “Free Solo.” That film chronicled Alex Honnold’s attempt to free climb Yosemite’s famed rock, El Capitan. For their latest NatGeo documentary, “The Rescue,” they had a great story and barely any footage.

“The Rescue” revolves around the complicated, multi-nation underwater rescue mission in 2018 to save the lives of 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach trapped two kilometers in the flooded Tham Luang cave in the country’s Chiang Rai Province. It recently opened to glowing reviews after winning the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. The L.A. Times’ Justin Chang noted that the “The Rescue” is a “gripping, unsurprising moving early account,...

Making a documentary chronicling the events of the infamous Thai cave rescue mission was no easy feat for filmmakers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, especially because they hadn’t been on the ground to capture what was transpiring after 12 kids were stuck in a flooding cave in 2018.

Instead of just using footage from other news outlets who had been there, the “Free Solo” filmmakers decided to have the actual divers from that fateful retrieval reenact their mission, and the filmmakers negotiated with Thai Navy SEALs to release footage they had filmed.

“It’s footage from news cameras — we’re piecing together a CNN shot and a local Thai news shot and together, they make a scene — but we decided to do reenactments with the actual divers, reenacting the events,” Vasarhelyi told TheWrap’s Editor in Chief Sharon Waxman in a video interview during the Toronto International Film Festival.

“And...

It was always going to be very difficult for documentary filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin to equal their sweaty palms masterpiece Free Solo, but they come close enough with The Rescue. Unlike their 2018 Oscar-winner, which focused on one dare-devil climber’s attempt to scale something close to a sheer cliff, the team’s new effort involves a vast operation to save the lives of a dozen teenaged athletes and their coach trapped in a labyrinthian cave in far northern Thailand in June and July of 2018. The suspense and unique character of the widely followed story guarantees vast international viewer interest in this cogently reported National Geographic offering.

It may be difficult for viewers who suffer from claustrophobia and/or fear of the dark to cope with long stretches of this tightly told chronicle. But this is nothing compared to what the participants had to have felt when rapidly rising waters prevented the team,...

Already making a splash on the festival circuit with a Telluride premiere followed by Toronto later this month is “The Rescue.” “Free Solo” Oscar winners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin detail the harrowing 2018 rescue of the Thai soccer team trapped in a cave for 16 days. National Geographic and Greenwich Entertainment will release the film in theaters this October. Watch the trailer below.

Per the official synopsis, “The film chronicles the enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand. Academy Award-winning directors and producers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin keep viewers on the edge of their seats as they use a wealth of never-before-seen material and exclusive interviews to piece together the high-stakes mission, highlight the efforts of the Royal Thai Navy SEALs and U.S. Special Forces, and detail the...

Taken together, boundless courage, physical stamina and emotional resilience form the magnetic core of co-directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s nonfiction oeuvre. The duo behind Oscar-winning nail-biter “Free Solo” naturally gravitate toward real-life you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it tales, extracting from them a great deal more than beautifully photographed and entertaining accounts of perseverance and survival. Far greater than mere extreme sports docs, their movies raise philosophical queries about life and the universe, bringing an existential edge to the challenges they capture.

Still, no risk that Chin and Vasarhelyi have depicted thus far has been more significant or more unreservedly worth taking than the one they chart in “The Rescue,” a stunning documentary of bone-deep moral resonance and cinematic mastery that deserves to be experienced on the big screen. The extraordinary story they tell this time takes us to the summer of 2018, when the Wild Boar soccer team — a dozen young boys...

“The Rescue” is first and foremost . “Free Solo” filmmakers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin — further cementing their reputation as rock stars of the extreme non-fiction cinema scene with their most absorbing and ingeniously crafted stress-fest to date — so intimately embed us with the ragtag team of cave divers who attempted the impossible that we feel worthy of a medal just for watching them do it.

And yet, the documentary’s ample suspense is never so overwhelming that it obscures this story’s poignant sentiment, nor is the selfless heroism on display so overwrought that it washes away the bittersweet aftertaste “The Rescue” leaves behind. Yes, Vasarhelyi and Chin have cobbled together a true life men-on-a-mission movie intense enough that even Michael Bay and Peter Berg should be able to recognize that no mega-budget dramatization could match up to it. But “The Rescue” ultimately isn’t as fraught a story...

Academy award winning director Ron Howard has now tapped a hugely talented trio to lead his upcoming biographical survival drama Thirteen Lives, with Viggo Mortensen The Lord of the Rings, Green Book, Colin Farrell The Batman, and Joel Edgerton Warrior now signed on. Thirteen Lives will chronicle the real-life events of the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue that saw a junior football team and their coach trapped in a cave for a period of 18 days.

The three A-listers will lead a stacked supporting cast made up of all sorts of familiar faces including Weir Sukollawat (Malila), Thiraphat Sajakul (The Serpent), Sahajak Boonthanakit (The Serpent), Vithaya Pansringarm (The Prey), Teeradon "James" Supapunpinyo (Bad Genius), Nophand Boonyai (Only God Forgives), Tom Bateman (Death on the Nile), Paul Gleeson (The Thin Red Line), and Lewis Fitz-Gerald (Pitch Black).

Taking place in 2018, the incident was highly publicised at the time, as many professionals and the...

Exclusive: It took a village to rescue those 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded Thailand cave in 2018. MGM and Thirteen Lives director Ron Howard have firmed a big international cast to play the heroic rescuers who took part in a dangerous operation that cost one rescue diver — Thai Navy Seal Saman Gunan — his life. All of the boys, and the coach, were saved before floodwaters completely filled the caves.

Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, and Joel Edgerton will star with Weir Sukollawat (Malila), Thiraphat Sajakul (The Serpent), Sahajak Boonthanakit (The Serpent), Vithaya Pansringarm (The Prey), Teeradon “James” Supapunpinyo (Bad Genius), Nophand Boonyai (Only God Forgives), Tom Bateman (Death on the Nile), Paul Gleeson (The Thin Red Line), and Lewis Fitz-Gerald (Pitch Black).

The film will shoot in Australia — with the support of the Australian and Queensland Governments — and also Thailand. Production begins this month. Thirteen Lives will be released theatrically in the U.