The Rescue (2021)

Directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi won an Oscar for their vertiginous 2019 documentary Free Solo, which focused on Alex Honnold's untethered climb up El Capitan. Their cameras scaled the sheer face of the rock along with Honnold, putting viewers as close to the action as possible.

Chin and Vasarhelyi have taken the same intrepid approach in depicting the 2018 heroic campaign to rescue a team of 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach who were trapped in one of the country's labyrinthine caverns during monsoon season, which meant most of the caves were underwater and eventually every inch would be submerged. The directors' primary subjects are an international team of cave divers who have the skills and equipment to navigate the darkness and rushing waters that the Thais lack.

Just like Free Solo, The Rescue is crystalline in capturing the obsession and peculiarities driving the team of cave divers, who readily admit being an odd lot, drawn to challenges from which others would cower -- finding deep satisfaction in the solitude of cave discovery. Each talks about fearing only one aspect of the Thai rescue, however -- being responsible for another person's life.

The film is gripping, nerve-wracking and occasionally overwhelming, but also, in the end, tremendously life-affirming and a testament to the human capacity for selfless goodness.