Free diver sues Netflix, claiming No Limit film depicted him as a murderer

No Limit was released on Sept 9, 2022, and held the No. 1 spot in Netflix’s weekly list of top 10 non-English films for two weeks. PHOTO: AFP

LOS ANGELES – A Cuban-American free diver who set 21 world records is suing Netflix for defamation, claiming the media giant wrongly depicted him as a murderer in the 2022 film No Limit.

The film is presented as a fictional work, inspired by real events, but Mr Francisco Ferreras claims it is similar to what happened in his life, with the exception that the film’s lead character, Pascal Gautier, deliberately killed his wife, a fellow free diver.

A picture and the name of Mr Ferraras’ wife, Audrey, who drowned in a record attempt dive, appear at the end of the film.

“Many viewers reasonably concluded that Ferreras behaved in real life in the same way that the Gautier character behaves in the film,” Mr Ferreras’ lawyer Alexander Rufus-Isaacs wrote in the complaint, filed on Wednesday in a Los Angeles federal court.

“There was a storm of online abuse directed at him by viewers who believed that he had murdered Audrey.”

Netflix’s docu-dramas have landed the company in court on numerous occasions now.

The company settled a defamation suit by a Georgian chess master who claimed a reference to her in an episode of The Queen’s Gambit was sexist and belittling.

That suit was also brought by Mr Rufus-Isaacs and is pending.

Earlier in March, a judge threw out a lawsuit brought by a retired police officer who claimed he was defamed by Netflix’s series Making A Murderer, Variety magazine reported.

Netflix declined to comment on Mr Ferreras’ lawsuit.

No Limit was released on Sept 9, 2022, by Netflix and held the No. 1 spot in Netflix’s weekly list of top 10 non-English films for the first two weeks, according to the complaint.

Mr Ferreras said in a phone interview from Cuba that the producers did not contact him before the film was released and he found out about it only from friends and posts on Facebook, where he said he was called “all sorts of ugly things”.

“It caught me by surprise,” he said. “Why did they do something like that to us?”

Holding breath

Free diving involves being lowered to a predetermined depth under water and, with no exterior air supply, returning to surface by hanging onto a sled with an inflatable lift bag.

The diver has to hold his breath for two to three minutes while experiencing the pressure from the weight of the water. 

The real-life Ms Audrey Mestre, a French citizen, died as a result of her last dive, when the sled returned to the surface too slowly, leaving her underwater for more than 8½ minutes, according to the complaint. The death was ruled accidental by the authorities in the Dominican Republic, according to the complaint.

In the film, it is suggested that Gautier tampered with the equipment to kill his wife.

Mr Ferreras’ last logged record dive was in 2000 when he reached a depth of 162m, according to the complaint. In 2003, he reached 171m, matching the depth of his wife’s last dive.

He is seeking unspecified monetary damages from Netflix, as well as Nolita Cinema, which produced the film, and writer and director David M. Rosenthal.

A representative for Mr Rosenthal did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment. BLOOMBERG

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