First movie on Thai cave ordeal features actual rescue divers

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The first movie retelling the dramatic cave rescue in northern Thailand last year will hit Thailand's cinemas on Nov 28, with a cast that includes cave divers from the actual rescue mission.
Director Tom Waller (right) working with the cast and crew of "The Cave". PHOTO: DE WARRENNE PICTURES
Jim Warny, a cave diver from Belgium who joined the rescue mission in July last year, reprised his role for the movie "The Cave". PHOTO: DE WARRENNE PICTURES

BANGKOK - The first movie retelling the dramatic cave rescue in northern Thailand that gripped the world last year will hit Thailand's cinemas on Nov 28, with cave divers participating in the actual rescue mission cast.

Written and directed by Thai-Irish director Tom Waller, The Cave will be in both Thai and English.

The cast are mainly Thai with divers from Ireland, Canada, Finland and China.

Filmed in Thailand, Ireland and Wales, The Cave "follows the volunteer spirit of the rescuers, not so much the boys' story", Mr Waller told The Straits Times on Wednesday (Oct 2).

"I met Jim Warny, one of the cave rescue divers who had been involved in the mission, and hearing his story just made me certain that I needed to make this film," he said in an e-mail interview.

Said Mr Warny: "It felt right. It happened very naturally."

Talking about his decision to join the project after being approached by Mr Waller, he said: "It was the only possible way for me to be at peace with what was going to be portrayed. I was in full control of my storyline."

Mr Warny said he was asked to join the rescue mission by British divers he used to go on expeditions with, who were already at the cave.

"I didn't need to think twice about it. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity," he said.

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As the rescued group - a dozen teenage boys and their young football coach - has granted exclusive media rights to SK Global, a US entertainment firm behind hits like Crazy Rich Asians, the filmmakers do not have access to the boys.

"I think we have gone in the right direction by focusing on the rescuers rather than the boys," said Mr Waller.

Although the boys continue to go to school and play football as usual in the northern province of Chiang Rai bordering Myanmar, their lives have changed forever after the rescue. They have become minor celebrities, having appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and played a friendly football match at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires last October.

Some of the boys have more than 100,000 followers each on Instagram, with many fan accounts created.

Apart from The Cave, a Netflix deal for the story was signed in April, but the format of the show and its release date remain unknown.

For Mr Chukiat Luangsopapan, head of the Sirikorn Chiang Rai disaster relief group, who led the first team of rescuers into the cave the first night the group was trapped, the mission was the hardest he has been through and he has learnt a lot from it.

"The movie can help people relate better to what the rescuers had to go through," he added.

With the cave's interior closed for safety reasons and the area surrounding the cave opened as a tourist attraction, the film crew managed to spend only one day filming the actual cave. The underwater scenes were filmed at a makeshift cave that took six weeks to construct at a swimming pool in Bangkok.

"The name of the film is The Cave, so there has to be cave in it," said the director.

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