Subterranean documentary follows B.C. cavers who make record-breaking trips underground
New film captures frustrations and triumphs inherent to a punishing sport—and allows the rest of us to experience it by proxy
Subterranean screens one night only on October 30 and 31, and November 2 and 5 at Vancity Theatre before moving to its home on the Knowledge Network on November 7
HELL ISN’T HOT—it’s a wet, freezing, claustrophobic place where you might drown, or be crushed, or where you might suffocate, slowly, in the impossible darkness that remains once you’re final lamp has expired. This is where cavers go to get their kicks.
“I think a lot of people watch the film and are, like, ‘I don’t really want to do that, it looks really uncomfortable,’” laughs Jenny Rustemeyer, producer of the BC-set doc Subterranean. “So yeah, for some people that could be a version of Hell, and that’s why it's so interesting. Even if nothing really happened in the film—although we were lucky it did—it’s just fascinating to me that people want to spend their weekends going underground and in such gruelling conditions.”
Receiving a single screening at Vancity Theatre on Monday (October 30) before moving to its home on the Knowledge Network on November 7, Subterranean follows two teams in pursuit of record-breaking feats of speleology right here in BC. On Vancouver Island, Franck Tuot attempts to link an array of tunnels into a vast single system, the longest in the country if he can pull it off, while in the Rockies, Katie Graham doggedly pushes further into the Amina Bisaro cave in order to break the Canadian record for depth—an effort that will require scuba diving in a pristine blue sump over 600 metres below ground. In both cases, Subterranean captures the frustrations and triumphs inherent to this incomparably punishing sport while bringing us a little closer to the participants, who routinely leave behind regular jobs, worried family-members, and children.
For Graham and her team, the descent also means seven days of camping “inside a refrigerator.” As such Subterranean memorably and graphically answers the perfectly reasonable question: how does one go about taking a dump 600 metres underground?
“That’s actually the director Francois-Xavier [De Ruydts],” reveals Rustemeyer. “That’s his cameo, that’s him with the GoPro because, you know, he didn’t want to film anybody else. There’s more to that footage and the poor editor had to look through it all.” More seriously, De Ruydts and his assistant in a two-person camera crew both exerted as much grit as their subjects. The viewer is left wondering how much of it was done.
“He’s an adventurer in his own right,” says Rustemeyer. “He has a drive to make perfect images, which takes so much effort when you’re underground. Everything needs to be lit, every single shot. I don’t want to say this project broke him but after production he moved to a farm.”
As for Tuot and Graham, there are setbacks for both and astonishing acts of courage and will. Rustemeyer reveals that insurers balked at the project when they heard the word caving, and it’s no spoiler to reveal that Katie, at one point, is forced to haul herself back to the surface after a horrifying injury, performing a three-day climb to a snow-covered cave mouth in the middle of nowhere. But it doesn’t break her spirit.
“I really think it’s the draw of exploration and adventure,” reasons Rustemeyer, whose previous films include 2018’s acclaimed This Mountain Life. “You can’t really get that in many other places. Most of the mountaineering has been done. You’re not the first person to do that trip. In these places, you are the first. The Vancouver Island team, they’re just going for day trips and they’re still uncovering brand new passages that nobody else has ever been in.”
Meanwhile, those of us who will never enter a cave, either from claustrophobia or from watching The Descent, we get to do it all by proxy. “I think when I get to the point that I need to squeeze through something, that’s kind of my limit,” chuckles Rustemeyer. “So really, this kind of film is the only way that I could ever experience it. And it is beautiful.”
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