The immediate challenge director Chai Vasarhelyi faced in making “The Rescue” was that there was no footage of the gripping 2018 rescue attempt to save 12 young members of a Thai soccer club and their coach from an underwater cave. Clips from the news was all they had to work with.
But Vasharhelyi says that didn’t deter her and fellow filmmaker Jimmy Chin from telling the awe-inspiring tale. “This idea of so many different people from different, religions, colors, creed, volunteers and military all coming together — and only together were they able to affect this impossible rescue,” she says.
Vasarhelyi added that she and Chin were based a world away from Thailand when they started to make the film, and ran into yet another challenge — the pandemic. Interviews therefore needed to be completed over Zoom and remotely.
In piecing the storytelling together without…
