What drives someone to dive ever deeper into underwater caves? .
Deeper
The film enjoyed its world premiere at SXSW 2025.
"You've just helped rescue a dozen Thai schoolchildren and their teacher from a perilous underwater cave! What are you going to do next?" "I'm going back into the underwater cave!"
It sounds like a television advert for Disney World, only kinda nuts, because who would want to return to the scene where the lives of 13 people were in your hands? Meet Richard "Harry" Harris.
From an early age, Harry became fascinated with diving, as revealed in Jennifer Peedom's documentary. He had formed a tight bond with his father, who did not understand Harry's growing obsession. Truth be told, neither did Harry. Something about diving under the water appealed to him, though, on a fundamental level that, even now, he is hard pressed to explain.
Trained as an anesthesiologist, Harry began diving with more experienced divers in the latter part of the 2000s. Some of the divers were legendary, and Harry admits that he was a bit overwhelmed in their presence. Fully aware of his relative limitations, as well as a few embarrassing miscalculations, Harry pressed on, progressing to the point that he felt comfortable in their presence.
His medical training and his diving experience combined when 12 Thai schoolchildren and their teacher were inadvertently trapped by heavy rainfall and flooding in an underwater cave for more than a week in 2018, miles from the mouth of the cave. Thousands of people were involved in searching for the missing 13, including more than 100 divers.
After evaluating multiple options, the decision was made to go with Harry's suggestion: sedate the boys and float them, unconscious, to the cave opening. There were no guarantees for survival. Happily, all 13 were successfully rescued.
In the aftermath, the quiet and modest Harry was acclaimed as a hero and expected to attend interviews, media events, and the like, all of which made him increasingly uncomfortable. He dodged the attention as much as possible, being content to spend time with his devoted wife and beloved children. Yet the quiet calm of diving kept calling.
And so a great adventure still awaited Harry. He teamed up with longtime friends to dive deep into an underwater cave system in New Zealand, where unknown challenges lay quiet in the dark.
Jennifer Peedom's film is invigorating. It's not necessarily from the inherent danger of diving deep into a cave where you might not emerge, where a mistake of some kind could end your life, painfully, within minutes. No, a different kind of courage is involved with undertaking such an experience willingly, knowing that you might be forever separate from your family and friends.
To put it into words, it's kinda like 'informed thrill seeking.' You know the dangers, but you simply must do it anyway, not because of the danger, but despite the danger. Deeper captures that feeling, that emotion, that drive, perfectly.