Ayla Ruby
Michael John Warren, a filmmaker who’s tackled everything from the high-energy world of music to the intense drama of Broadway, now dives deep into the breathtaking and dangerous world of free diving in his newest documentary. In Freediver, Warren follows Alexey Molchanov, the world’s greatest free diver, as he makes five world record-breaking free diving attempts. The film explores not only the physical and mental extremes of free diving but also the personal journey of Molchanov as he grapples with family relationships and his own mortality against the backdrop of a politically charged sports world. Over Zoom, Warren sat down to talk with us about that and more.
Ayla Ruby: I’m really excited to chat. This was just really beautifully made and compelling. I knew nothing about free diving or Alexey before watching it, and I was just totally, totally into it by those first couple of moments, so amazing job.
Michael John Warren: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate those kind words. It was a hard movie to make, a very hard movie to make, and so I’m really glad that it seems to be getting a lot of positive attention from everyone I’m talking to. So I’m really, really happy because if I had worked that hard to make a movie that everyone hated, I would be really depressed right now.
Ayla Ruby: And I totally understand. I have a lot of questions about that, but I guess I want to jump into it a little bit. So you’ve got this really interesting filmography. What was kind of your journey to this story, this very hard movie to make?
Michael John Warren: Yeah. Well, so I’m really lucky as a director in documentary, people really love to pigeonhole creatives. They’re like, well, he does shampoo commercials and they only do this. And I’ve been really lucky throughout my career to break into a bunch of different lanes within documentary. And so I do a lot of music stuff. I do a lot of Broadway stuff. I’ve done a lot of sports stuff in the past, and I’m doing single camera where I’m having a really intimate conversation and getting someone to bare their soul for me. And I’m also building an entire army to film an entire Broadway show in a single take, right?
Ayla Ruby: Yeah.
Michael John Warren: And a lot of things in between. True crime and all that. So all of those skills came to bear in this film. I don’t know if I could have done it if I hadn’t done all those things. I have gotten those reactions out of Alexey if I hadn’t done so many interviews over all those years, could I have filmed him going 512 feet underwater and one time it’s a world record, he is not going to do it again if I hadn’t spent years doing these essentially single take Broadway films that require meticulous planning. And so every single thing I’ve learned as a director over the last 20 years came to bear on this film. And I don’t know how anyone else would’ve made this film, to be honest with you, because very few people have that wide of skillset. And so yeah, my journey to get to this film was completely required in order to pull this film off.
Ayla Ruby: How did you first hear about how the story and was it the GQ article? How did that all happen?
Michael John Warren: Yeah, there was a GQ article. Some friends of mine at Boardwalk Pictures, which is a really great production company in California, called me up. They said, read this article. Do you want to make a film out of this? If you do, I do or we do. And so I said, okay. And I read it and my mouth fell open When I was reading, I was like the biological medical stuff in that article, I was like, what your heart rate goes to, what your lungs do, what your eardrums could rupture? The whole thing was just, I was like, this is intense. And then you learn. And I was like, the science of it got me really excited. And then you hear Alexey’s story and his relationship with his mother and it just felt like a really complex, strange character. It wasn’t so easy to figure out exactly what his character was, which I like. I like a challenge obviously. And so I read the article and I said, this sounds really hard to make. It sounds like a fascinating story. Let’s do it. And luckily we were able to convince some people to give us the money they run around the world and make a really hard to make film, and I’m really proud to be presenting it to the world.
Ayla Ruby: I think you’ve touched on it a little bit, some of the things, but why do you think this is just a compelling, such a compelling story? Why is he so fascinating? Why are these record attempts so interesting and free diving as well?
Michael John Warren: Yeah, well, so just as a sport, it’s just like you can’t believe your eyes. It is just completely mind blowing, especially when you understand what can happen to you down there,
Which is why I start the film that way really, really in the film, you get a pretty good look at here’s what can happen. And so I wanted to make sure the audience knew that so it wasn’t just a guy diving down because it’s actually kind of a peaceful sport. It’s a really beautiful sport, but it’s also extremely dangerous. And so I wanted to make sure that people knew what could happen before we got too deep into the film. And yeah, like I said, his story was just really so fascinating that I just wanted to present that really complex character as well. And so it just felt like this crazy challenge. There’s a lot of elements that I didn’t know how to pull off, and it just felt like this really, really hard to tell story. And I’m really proud of the way we were able to weave sort of his past with his present and his mother in the way. There’s a scene in France where I think the whole film sort of clicks where things that you’ve been learning about and he’s doing this world record attempt in France, and it’s a place where his mother had a really big moment and all these plot lines come together and that scene, it’s definitely my favorite scene of the film. And I just felt really inspired by all those things. And I knew it was going to be hard to pull off, but I was lucky enough to build a crew to help me pull all that off.
Ayla Ruby: There’s everything you’ve mentioned so far. How was it, so you have to get buy-in from him and his family and people who are close to him to kind of share these stories and develop this relationship. What was that like? How was that process? How do you build that friendship or relationship?
Michael John Warren: Yeah, it was actually pretty easy, to be honest. Alexey loves free diving. He’s wants to preach the good word of free diving to the world. So when you approach Alexey and says, do you want to make a movie? He’s like, yes, can we please make a movie? It really wasn’t very hard to convince him, but building his trust is a different thing. Do you want to make a movie about me? Sure, yeah, that was easy. But tell me the real, real about what’s going on in your mind, what you really feel about being away from your son, what you really feel about your mother that took a lot longer. And those kind of relationships are not something you just have immediately. And Alexey is guarded. He isn’t an open book at all. And it took a long time to get him to believe in me and to trust in me. And I think he does now. And I think you can even see it as you watch the film at the top of the film, he’s speaking one way and in the last 20 minutes of the film he’s speaking a different way. And so you really watch him. And it’s not just me that does that. The events that happen in the film change the man.
And so it takes a long time. I’m a patient person and he had an incredible story to tell and I was really grateful to convince him to let me tell it.
Ayla Ruby: I think one of his friends, even during the movie, talks about how he’s friendly, but there’s this guardedness too and that that was so interesting.
Michael John Warren: It’s very real. He’s never out of sorts emotionally, you know what I mean? That’s why they call him the machine. He is a machine. There’s part of him that can just turn off his emotional self and just go robot mode and it’s pretty impressive to watch. And we leaned into that because it’s a big part of who he is, that there’s something under there that there’s the son, the dad, the kid who wishes he was doing better at something, the husband. There’s all these other elements of this human life that come into the film, but they take a while to get there because that’s Alexey. And I’m really proud of how all that stuff came together in the film.
Ayla Ruby: So you talked about how you were up for the challenge, how that was part of what appealed about this story for you. Can you talk about some of the challenging parts to actually make happen because you’ve got water, there’s just so much going on.
Michael John Warren: Yeah, the biggest challenge is the ocean. It doesn’t care who you are or what you’re trying to do. It’s the ocean. I think it’s probably about as hard as it can get to film. We had to, and we didn’t just want to film it on a GoPro and call it a day. That’s not what I was interested in doing. I wanted to make a cinematic experience out of this film. And so we combined a bunch of existing technologies, upgraded some of existing technologies, put them together in a way they’ve never been put together before to film this really hard to film sport in a way that’s never been seen before. And I’m really proud of that because you really, really experience what it’s like to be down there.
I think maybe it looks easy when you watch the film, but it was extremely difficult to pull off. We had a scuba team shout out to Tommy and the Belgian crew. We had a Polish cable cam team that had developed a camera specifically for free diving. We upgraded their existing systems and then we had underwater robots, a French robotics underwater team. So we had this huge international crew all specializing in different stages of what, that’s how deep Alexey a goes. It took three different countries and three different camera teams to even capture it, which is just crazy. And so it was a really fun team too. I’m really quite in love with the crew I was able to put together for this project. And we had a blast making it. But again, the ocean doesn’t care. I think I was on at least twenty-two different flights to make this film. We were in eight different countries.
I was on more boats than I could possibly count, and there was literally a super typhoon bearing down on us while we were in the Philippines. And we were debating whether we were going to run, should we get off this very remote island in the deep Philippines. We ended up deciding it was actually safer to stay where we were, but the earth was by far the biggest obstacle on this project Earth was just good luck, bro. But another big challenge was we started making this film and right as we started, Alexa gets banned from the sport. He is dedicated his life to the greatest living free diver. We’re like, let’s make our movie. And then Russia invade Ukraine and all the sports were like, Russians are banned from sports, including free diving. And it was like, oh, maybe we’re not going to make this film.
This film’s done. And we thought about it and eventually I just said to the people who were paying for this film, I actually think the film’s better now. This is a huge challenge. This guy is so good. Here’s another thing that he has to overcome. And we didn’t even see it coming. And so Alexey, in that season, he had three world records going in. He loses to that season a’s sitting out because other people take ’em. And he comes back and he goes, well, now I’m going to do five and I’m going to do the most dominant season in the history of the sport. And it’s almost a suicidal mission, but that’s one part of what the movie’s about. That’s one of the journeys. The other journey is his internal journey, what he decides about himself and what he’s doing with his life, what he’s doing with his son, his wife, and what he wants to do with the rest of his time here on the planet. And so it’s this great sports story, but it’s also this really beautiful human story, and I’m proud of the way those things weave together. It’s more than just sports. It’s more than just, hold on. There’s a lot of that edge of your seat stuff, but there’s also a much I would call a deeper story where this man is trying to figure out how to live his life.
Ayla Ruby: I have other questions, but jumping ahead a little bit to that, to kind of the end where he decides about his son and looking forward to spending that time with him. I thought that was very profound and you could feel the change that he’s gone through.
Michael John Warren: Yeah, I mean, he goes through some really tough stuff and he really, I don’t want to say too much about the film, but he really, really has a tough time and has to rethink what he’s doing at all. And what would his mother say to him in this moment? And all of this really intense stuff that we can all identify with. A lot of us have careers where we have to travel and leave our child. I go through it all the time. I’m a documentarian. I’m on airplanes constantly, and I have a young child at home and I have a very supportive wife, thank goodness for her with her own career. And so a lot of us are going through that. Alexey is going through that on an even higher level, and when he leaves home, he’s going to put his life on the line. You know what I mean? It is not normal what he is doing. And so it was just a really fascinating character. The stakes don’t get much higher than what’s in this film. And watching him go through his own metamorphosis or going through his own changes to figure out what he wants to do with his life and while we’re filming him, it was great to see that that story come not full circle, but push forward
Ayla Ruby: Without spoiling it, because there are moments of peril. There’s one when one of the record attempts, it’s quite dangerous. And I’m talking about the fifth attempt.
Michael John Warren: It goes pretty poorly.
Ayla Ruby: Yes. And what was that kind of like for you as having a established friendship?
Michael John Warren: It was so terrifying. He announced what he was going to do the night before and I couldn’t sleep. I was like, he can’t do it. I was like, he can’t do this. Everyone said he couldn’t do it. And so I went back to my hotel on Long Island, Long Island, the Caribbean, not Long Island, out here in New York City, and I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night, got up with no sleep, went to the shoot. It went really bad.
Then I couldn’t sleep the next night either. So it was a really, really tough film I knew, and while making this film, I might be photographing someone’s death. It was just part of making this film. It was something I had to think about. I don’t think I thought about it much, but I always knew that this film had the potential to be that. It was hard. It was hard, but it’s also dramatic. And I’m a storyteller and I’m a documentarian, and Alexey is not a crazy person. He knows what he’s doing. He understands the chances he’s taking, and I’m not responsible for him. I’m responsible for capturing his story. So whenever it was time to focus on the technical, I focused on the technical because thinking about the other things might’ve ruined my ability to do it.
Ayla Ruby: It was very harrowing. So I know we’re starting to get close on time. Is there kind of a lasting message or something you want people to know about that we haven’t talked about either about free diving or the man himself?
Michael John Warren: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think Alexey can teach us all a lot of things. First of all, he can teach us what the human body’s capable of. And I think there are a lot of really well pedigreed doctors out there who don’t understand the human body the way that Alexey does. That’s fascinating to think about, and there’s an ancient wisdom to that because free diving’s been around for probably since humans. We were probably lagoon monkeys diving for oysters back in the day. I met someone who that’s their theory of evolution is actually monkeys in a lagoon like diving for fish and the oils from the fish is how we became smarter anyway, blah, blah, blah. But there’s a world where you can learn more about what you’re actually capable of physically.
You can also learn a way to improve your mind and what you’re capable of mentally. This is a mental sport. This is not just I’m in shape, I can do this because I’m not even sure that’s half of it, but that might be a third of it because then this whole other thing about what do you do when you’re 512 feet away from breathable air? There’s no air to breathe, there’s no safety divers, divers down there. There’s no scuba. If you start to panic, it’s over.
And so there’s this huge mental capacity, this huge mental challenge of the sport as well. And so you can learn, all of us can learn how to stay calm in crazy situations. Alexey wants to start a free diving school in Manhattan. I’m in Brooklyn, so I’m pointing towards Manhattan. He wants to start one in Manhattan. He’s like, no one needs to learn how to breathe better than Manhattan. And he’s right. And so you can learn that. But I think the larger message is how to live life. And I think people should take their own messages away on that whole thing. But you watch a really driven person reevaluate what matters in life in this film. And I think that can inspire us all to look at our own paths and make sure we’re on the right one.
Ayla Ruby: Well, that’s fantastic and thank you so much for chatting.
Freediver is now available on digital and on demand.
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