Thai cave rescue remembered in new Ron Howard film ‘Thirteen Lives’

Thirteen Lives recreates the 17-day ordeal inside the sprawling cave complex of a group of 12 boys and their football coach

Film stars American Viggo Mortensen and Ireland’s Colin Farrell portray the British divers who discovered the trapped group

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Thai soldiers relay electric cable deep into the Tham Luang cave at the Khun Nam Nang Non Forest Park in Chiang Rai during a rescue operation for a missing children’s football team and their coach in June 2018. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:53pm, 19 Jul 2022

Four years on from the dramatic rescue of a group of 12 boys and their football coach from a cave in Thailand, their story has been told by Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard in Thirteen Lives.

The boys, aged between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach, were exploring the Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai in June 2018 when monsoon rains flooded the tunnels and trapped them underground.

They survived nine days in a partially flooded chamber before being discovered by two British divers, but it took Thailand’s elite navy SEALs and international volunteers another eight days to bring them to safety.

Four Thai Navy Seal divers are seen after completing their rescue mission inside Tham Luang cave on July 10, 2018. Photo: Xinhua/Zuma Press/TNS

Thirteen Lives recreates the 17-day ordeal inside the sprawling cave complex and above the mountain covering it where volunteers, engineers and soldiers pumped millions of litres of water out of the cave and drilled through rocks looking for gaps to reach the boys.

“It’s stunning what was achieved. It’s not just about the heroic divers, you know, it really is an entire community and a country and a lot of countries ultimately participating and making something amazing come true,” Howard said at the film’s London premiere on Monday.

“It’s a very contemporary theme that we need to remind ourselves of, and that is how powerful we can all be internationally or on a community level when we pull together.”

The film stars American Viggo Mortensen and Ireland’s Colin Farrell as British divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, with Australian actor Joel Edgerton taking on the role of Harry Harris, who was brought on to help when options to save the boys were running out.