This sombre part of the film is carried by Bosch’s interview, and the scenes are handled sensitively but without spectacle by Baghai. “The water became a metaphor for my own drowning, because I was drowning in guilt,” she says shakily, holding back tears in front of the camera. She suffered nightmares and depression, and the water didn’t feel “the same” anymore. When he raped another girl a week later, she felt stricken with guilt for not reporting him. There, she worked as a scuba instructor, and one night, she was sexually assaulted by a colleague, for which she blamed herself. She took to it immediately, invested to the extent that she dropped out of university and moved to Thailand to learn more.
In this tight, hour-long documentary, a combination of interviews with Bosch, live-action recreations of her childhood, footage of her freediving, and interviews with loved ones and experts are used to piece together the full extent of why, and the key follow-up: how?īosch, who is from the Netherlands, was a university student with a love of swimming and scuba diving when she first came across freediving – diving without scuba gear – on holiday in Colombia. “It’s something that saved my life and has taught me so many things ever since,” she says.
In the opening montage, Bosch begins by answering the inevitable question of why she freedives. It’s a truly extreme sport that few attempt. In her ice freedives, there’s a tiny margin of error that doesn’t allow for any panic. But unlike Bosch, who holds her breath when diving underwater with no scuba gear and no wetsuit, the audience can exhale any time. The first shot of Bosch, standing in water, surrounded by chunks of ice and wearing only one-piece bathers, takes your breath away.
Despite watching the movie in the comfort of my house, Baghai’s portrait of ice freediver Kiki Bosch is so immersive that I could feel the chill across my entire body. I am not a person who copes well with the cold, and by halfway through Nays Baghai’s documentary, Descent, I had full-body shivers.