Why? The question of why, repeated several times in the documentary entitled ‘Freediver’ by Michael John Warren is what most people ponder on after watching the film. This is really fascinating because it introduces the viewer to Alexey Molchanov and his mastery in a sport that many people have not thought about much but will be hard to forget.
Based on an article written by Daniel Riley in GQ magazine in 2021, the movie starts with a verbatim text block: “The goal of competitive freediving is simple: go as deep as you can on a single breath and return to the surface without blacking out or dying.” In this article, there was reflection on Molchanov’s astonishing abilities as well as some of his fellow divers bonding. The documentary gives even more insight into how deeply Alexey went.
Natalia Molchanova is also very prominent both in her son’s life story and in terms of the sport. She won many swimming championships before splitting up with Oleg, who happened to be Alexey’s father during his teenage years. After they got divorced Natalia was able to find out who she really was only when she was forty years old and when she discovered freediving. Additionally, from her relative’s point of view there are some extracts from poems that she composed after her ‘rebirth’.
To her son however, it was a discovery which as she got better at it. She became a record holder long before Alexey did. Like divers going down deeper and deeper into the main line, Warren uses the story of mother-son relationship.
This home video captures Natalia looking happy either on land or when wearing her wetsuit. She disappeared while doing a pretty ordinary dive off the coast of Spain in 2015. (Natalia also played a significant albeit posthumous role in last year’s equally captivating documentary “The Deepest Breath” about freediver Alessia Zecchini.) It is tender and psychologically haunting because of Natalia’s presence in “Freediver.” It is dedicated to her.
In his early years, younger Molchanov’s life recounted by the film touched on two things: The unsurprising (he started swimming very impressively from birth) and lovable aspects: Before being called “machine” meaning one with bright eyes he was referred to as “retriever” due to his mother and older divers’ puppy-like behavior.
In 2022, Warren started filming and in the same year, Alexey was disqualified from participating at Vertical Blue by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His world records got stolen while his son, Alexey Molchanov was still a baby in Moscow with his wife Elena Sokolova.
The documentary owes much of its drama to these efforts made by Molchanov during the year 2023 (he took part as a neutral) to retrieve the records as well as those required for completing five different diving categories. A young man of thirty-six years old is sitting in one of them elucidating the rules for every event; variable weight, monoline, bi-fins free immersion and probably the most dangerous discipline called no-fins where his eyes are shining and his enthusiasm tugs sweetly. It is understandable why he has already opened some self-named diving schools and plans on having more.
This search carried him across some popular places yet remote ones for this tribe of competitive freedivers, their families and sport lovers: Bonaire, Bahamas, Nice or Honduras. In Philippines he gets less time due to an approaching typhoon to accomplish one of these goals. This accelerates his mission just how much dedicated (or is it reckless?) he can be.
The genre’s familiar beats are delivered by the mix of talking heads and underwater footage (brilliantly captured on film by Jeff Louis Peterman). Nonetheless, “Freediver” contains a number of well-phrased moments.
They provide an opportunity for viewers to see Alexey as something other than a competitive athlete. They are able to achieve this through fragmentation, hallucination and other forms of distorted imagery which create an impression that the consciousness is blurring over just before a blackout or in trancelike calmness.
Warren does even go further by creating a nemesis for his hero: William Trubridge. The record holder in no-fin freediving and founder of the Vertical Blue invitational event was instrumental in getting Molchanov barred from competition in 2022 because he had his reasons. On camera, Adam Skolnick, author of “One Breath: Freediving, Death and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits,” points out Trubridge’s seeming conflict of interest: He’d held it for seven years when Alexey goes after it.
However, this poses a hurdle to the viewer, as one might think she is being thrown out of Alexey’s world. The author dismisses any moral ambiguity when it comes to sports and nationalism and wars in his game. This trivializing statement also stabs those who may have noticed that there is a link between the two Alexeys: this one who travels around the world freely, returns to his wife and little son in Moscow; another one had made appearances in some documentary, but lived in absolutely different Russia. It becomes difficult to accept the enclosed universe of the movie without mixed emotions about people like Natallia; or even other extreme sports for that matter although it doesn’t take away from this longer lasting impression which the story about Alexei and Natalia creates.
Watching Nawi, two things are quickly noticeable. First, the film is carried by a wonderful lead performance. Michelle Lemuya Ikeny is the actress who stars in the main role of a 13-year-old girl who wants to go to high school but instead has to fight her community’s patriarchal customs. She will be married off with a sizeable dowry in livestock. Second, the film suffers from being too politically correct on child marriage because its creative team comprising of Toby Schmutzler, Kevin Schmutzler, Vallentine Chelluget and Apuu Mourine focuses so much on making it known their staunch stand against child marriages than entertaining the viewers as it would happen in other movies. By concentrating more on their piece of politics, four co-directors have failed to provide setting in which the lead character may exhibit her great acting skills.
Nawi was chosen as Kenya’s representative at this year’s Oscars and takes place in Turkana, a rural region situated at the northern part of East Africa. The story is based on true events that start with an academically brilliant and diligent young heroine acing her high school entrance exams.
At the same time, her teacher and friends are celebrating her while a TV news crew is interviewing her about her academic excellence; on the contrary, Eree (Ochungo Benson) develops a plan to marry off his daughter to an older man.
She is the only girl in a family of boys and thus she has to be the sacrifice so that she can save them from this situation by getting married so that they would use this dowry amount to survive. “60 sheep, eight camels, 100 goats. No more, no less,” she records in her diary and we hear it as voiceover.
Prior to the marriage, the documentary takes time to explore Nawi’s patriarchal construct of family and its complex interrelationships. The head of household Eree has two wives: Ekai (Nungo Marrianne Akinyi) and Rosemary (Michelle Chebet Tiren). Nawi was born to Rosemary who is Eree’s second wife and young one among them. These early scenes build real drama and tension in the family. Both women believe Nawi’s place is as a wife and mother totally adhering to their community’s traditions.
Ekai says it as it is, while Rosemary tries to sell the idea of seeing the positive side in Nawi by saying she could have a smart daughter like her. This mother-daughter relation is well captured, with the actors showing so affectionately how Nawi grew up brave and graceful and that was a result of lots of love and support. Also, Nawi has an emotional yet playful relationship with her brother, Joel (Joel Liwan), even if they share different mothers.
Ikeny holds the film together through an emotionally clear performance throughout this set-up. The directors opt to use many scenes on her face such as close-ups to capture her reactions to what’s happening. Ikeny always keeps you glued to your screen and manages to silently express what her character is going through. For such a young actress; she fills up the frame without struggle making the story feel bigger than life all alone.
Even when “Nawi”’s screenplay runs out of ideas and resorts into plain melodrama, Ikeny remains the only reason why someone would watch it. This character goes through: escaping from a difficult situation, trying hitchhiking towards Nairobi then becomes a mentor/teacher for boys around my age group where she has to make many important choices.
Ikeny portrays Nawi as brave, rebellious, frightened and confused all at once during this long journey. Both the character and actor grow on screen and demonstrate genuine determination.
However, even Ikeny’s performance cannot save the film once it hurtles to its conclusion. “Nawi,” which started as a character study, ends up being little more than a by rote PSA. The film loses artistic merit and dramatic credence as it desperately tries to make a point about child marriage. Although serious in nature, this is not how the topic should be addressed in movies.
The filmmakers resort to hammy techniques such as having the actor address the camera but then forget their main character and never get back to his story that they were going to tell us. Clearly the filmmakers had good intentions working with different NGOs in order to tell this story but their movie ultimately ends up being nothing more than an educational tool something that could have come straight from one of these humanitarian institutions.
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