The Volcano Rescue From Whakaari Trailer Leonardo Dicaprio Eps Doc

Kennedy directs and produces the film, which screened at AFI and DOC NYC ahead of the three-year anniversary of the tragic natural disaster that claimed 22 lives. Kennedy tracks the minute-by-minute unfolding of the eruption. The official synopsis reads: During a routine sightseeing day-trip to a remote volcanic island, 47 tourists and guides were trapped in the epicenter of a boiling pyroclastic surge of toxic dust and ash. Both terrifying and inspiring, the film uses first-hand accounts to convey the experience of living through such a lethal eruption. Leonardo DiCaprio and Ron Howard both serve as executive producers, along with Brian Grazer, Jennifer Davisson, and Phillip Watson. Mark Bailey, Dallas Brennan Rexer, Sara Bernstein, and Justin Wilkes also produce. Bailey and Rexer are co-writers.

Cinematographers Dominic Fryer, Mike Jonathan, Mark Lapwood, and Murray Milne acted as the directors of photography on the feature documentary that features the survivors of the 2019 Whakaari eruption. Jawad Metni edited the documentary over the course of nine months. “From the beginning, ‘The Volcano’ struck me largely as an event: a harrowing, lethal event, an eruption that happened at a specific time on a specific day and set into motion a specific narrative,” director Kennedy told Filmmaker Magazine. “So, from the start, my impulse was to try to render that event with the belief that the characters involved would emerge and define themselves through their relationship to it, through their choices and actions in the face of that eruption. Similarly, my hope was that whatever meaning one might extract from that day, it too would come out of absorbing what had happened and spending time with the people involved.” Kennedy added, “Given the proliferation of cellphones and video cameras, as well as the fact that this was indeed a tourist activity, I believed there had to be footage that would enable me to stay close to the ground, minute-by-minute, and that by structuring the film that way, the sum total of those minutes would add up to something larger.” “The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari” premieres on Netflix December 16. The film is an Imagine Documentaries, Appian Way, and Moxie Films Production. Check out the trailer below.