Takaisin pintaan

We know the story from the news: in 6th of February in 2014 five Finnish divers headed out for a 10 hour dive into to the underwater caves of Plurdalen in Northern Norway. At the end of the day, only three of them surfaced. Two members of the group died in the caves, at the depth of more than hundred meters. The officials concluded that bringing the bodies back up would be too dangerous, so the survivors decided to go on a secret rescue mission, which Reina's film crew followed in real time. Matters of life and death are constantly present, but the documentary wisely steers away from sentimentality. The difficulty of the task and the sorrow for their recent loss can be seen in the eyes of the divers, but we also hear them banter just minutes before they dive under the surface to bring back their dead comrades. The underwater images are beautiful and hypnotic, but also disturbingly claustrophobic. We get to see things from the diver's perspective and sometimes it is difficult to understand what is actually happening in the darkness of the cave. As breathing becomes heavier, the sense of direction is lost and the only light in the dark is the unnatural white glow from the flashlight. Only that white glow reminds us of the surface, of the friends waiting there and the friends who got lost behind.
Kira Schroeder / Translation: Tuomo Karvonen (DocPoint)