Free diver says Netflix movie falsely implies he killed his wife. He’s suing
A professional deep free diver is suing Netflix over a movie he says defames him by suggesting he killed his wife, according to court documents.
Francisco Ferreras Rodriguez, better known as “Pipin” Ferreras, who holds 23 world records in deep free diving, according to his Instagram profile, filed suit against Netflix, French movie company Nolita Cinema and California writer-director David M. Rosenthal, over the movie “No Limit.” Free diving is a sport that involves a diver holding his or her breath and diving deep underwater.
The French-language movie is a fictionalized film that tells the story of a woman who has a contentious relationship with a world-renowned free diver and becomes a champion in the sport herself. She dies while trying to break a world free-diving record after a scene that appears to show her partner tampering with her equipment. A beginning film credit says it was “inspired by real events.”
Ferreras, who was married to Audrey Mestre, a French free diver who died in 2002 while trying to break a world record, accuses Netflix and the other defendants of defaming him for “dramatic purposes” by making the protagonists too similar to himself and his wife and falsely implying he was responsible for her death, the lawsuit says. The movie, which was released on Netflix in September, contains an “In memory” slide before the end credits with a photo of Mestre and a line describing her death.
Netflix, Nolita Cinema and Rosenthal did not immediately respond to requests for comment from McClatchy News.
Rosenthal told Variety that the film was vetted by lawyers before it went to production.
“This is a fictionalization of stories that were very much on the public eye — from documentaries to many articles and books about this,” Rosenthal told the outlet. “What I wrote is fiction, with fictional characters…I’m sure he’s trying to make a buck here by suing Netflix.”
‘Striking similarities’
The film “seeks to present itself as a fictional work,” but there are a “large number of striking similarities” between the fictional story and real-life facts and people, the complaint says.
Ferreras and Mestre met while Mestre was a university student and was studying Ferreras’ lung physiology as the subject of her thesis, according to the complaint. She later left her studies and began free diving with Ferreras. In 2000, she broke the female world record for free diving, the lawsuit says.
Around 2002, Ferreras stopped free diving because he began experiencing blackouts underwater. He suggested Mestre attempt to break a new free-diving world record, and the two traveled to the Dominican Republic with a dive team, the lawsuit says.
On Oct. 12, 2002, she descended to 561 feet, but the air tank on her sled, which is a piece of equipment designed to help free divers ascend quickly to the surface, did not inflate. She was brought unconscious to the surface and was later pronounced dead at a hospital, the lawsuit says.
Authorities in the Dominican Republic, as well as the International Association of Free Divers, determined her death was accidental, the complaint says.
In “No Limit,” the female protagonist, Roxana Aubrey, is a university student with physical features that are similar to Mestre’s, the complaint says. She meets the male protagonist, Pascal Gautier, after seeing a poster promoting his diving class.
In the movie, the character Gautier begins to black out underwater and suggests that Aubrey try to set records instead of him, the complaint says. When she tries to set a new record in the Caribbean, a scene shows Gautier hovering over her equipment after final safety checks were completed, according to the complaint. During Aubrey’s dive, she tries to come back to the surface but her equipment’s air tank does not inflate, and she dies.
The film contains a message saying “any resemblance with reality is coincidental,” but the complaint contends that the filmmakers “intentionally” made their movie resemble Ferreras and Mestre’s lives.
“The film is a thinly veiled account of the events surrounding the death by drowning of Ferreras’ wife,” the complaint says. Filmmakers made a “deliberate decision for dramatic purposes to defame Ferreras,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of defamation and false light invasion of privacy, which is the act of portraying someone in an unflattering and false manner.
‘Storm of online abuse’
After the movie’s release, viewers directed a “storm of online abuse” at Ferreras, according to the complaint. People have called him a “monster” and a “killer” and said things such as, “You should be in ... prison, murderer,” the complaint says.
“This has caused him personal humiliation, distress, and anguish, as well as damages to his earnings and/or potential earnings,” the complaint says.
Ferreras has had his reputation tarnished on top of living with the “grief of losing his wife in such tragic circumstances,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit is seeking damages in excess of $75,000.
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