'It goes beyond the headlines.' Thirteen Lives tells the story of the Thai Cave rescue the world didn't get to see.

It was the story that captivated the world. 

For more than a week, we watched and waited as an international rescue team orchestrated the harrowing rescue of 12 boys and a football coach from a flooded Thailand cave.

Now the heroes behind the incredible recovery effort are having their stories told in the new Prime Video film Thirteen Lives.

Watch the trailer for Thirteen Lives on Prime Video. Post continues below. 

Filmed in Queensland, the movie, which stars Joel Edgerton, Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen, and Tom Bateman, recounts the true events that unfolded on that fateful day on June 23, 2018. 

As the world would later learn, the 12 members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach were adventuring in the Tham Luang cave that day when water came flooding in and trapped them inside. 

Entombed behind a maze of floods, the group would have to survive for nine days before they were discovered. 

By that time, an international team of specialists from countries including Australia, China, Japan, the UK and the US, had come together to attempt to locate and rescue the boys. 

After 18 days inside the cave and three rescue missions, all 13 people were eventually ferried out alive, and the world breathed a sigh of relief. 

But four years on, there's much about the rescue that has gone untold. 

It was these unknown details that enticed award-winning Apollo 13 director Ron Howard to get involved in the film. 

"When I read the script by Bill Nicholson a couple of years [after the rescue]... there was so much beyond the headlines that I didn't know about. And I just felt like this has a chance to be a surprising, riveting, emotional, and suspenseful film," he told Mamamia via Prime Video.

But creating such a film required a lot of research. 

For one, Howard needed to speak with those involved in the rescue effort, including British divers Rick Stanton, John Volanthen, Jason Mallinson and Chris Jewell. 

"[We] began talking to the divers [and asking] 'Where were the most difficult bits?' 'Where were the challenges?' 'Where was it most life-threatening?' Those are the bits that we needed to understand and replicate, and then find ways to stage scenes in and around [them]."

There was also the challenge of replicating the cave itself and the dreaded sense of claustrophobia that many felt within its walls. 

"If you just go on YouTube and start looking at some of the cave diving footage, you recognise right away how claustrophobic it is and how fascinating it can be, so we dedicated ourselves to getting that kind of authenticity... The production designer spent a lot of time doing research [and] we got those schematics [of the real cave] as best as it's been mapped."

Image: Prime Video. 

For Aussie actor Joel Edgerton, who plays real-life diver Dr Richard 'Harry' Harris, re-enacting the 2018 rescue was no easy task. 

"There were certain days where you really feel the intensity of claustrophobia," he told Mamamia via Prime Video. 

Along with his co-stars, the 48-year-old, who's appeared in the 2017 film Bright and the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi series, had to learn how to dive all over again.

"All of us, Colin [Farrell], the actors playing the Thai Navy SEALs, Viggo [Mortensen], Tom Bateman, Paul [Gleeson], all these guys were learning to dive and trying to fast track our ability to look and feel like cave rescue divers. But not just diving, diving with particularly cumbersome equipment, in complete low visibility [in] dark cave sets, while carrying a person through pinch points."

The experience gave him a new appreciation of the real-life divers who put their lives on the line to rescue the boys. 

"There were definitely days where you're like, this is not a place to joke around, it's not a place to fool about. Even though we've got an incredible team there supporting us, things can definitely go wrong underwater, and it really gave me a new, deeper sense of reverence and respect for what these cave divers do. They're made of different stuff."

Edgerton also came to understand the "incredibly difficult job" that befell on Dr Harris all those years ago. 

As an anesthetist and cave diving enthusiast, Dr Harris abandoned his plans to holiday at South Australia's Nullarbor Plain, when he heard the news of the Thai boys and volunteered to help. 

"Harry was one of those people who was like, I have a skill that's valuable here, I want to be involved. And I don't think he realised how much of the crux of the rescue he was going to be, based on the other skill he had, which was his medical background," Edgerton explained. 

"[He] was under such incredible pressure knowing that, in order to agree to his part of the rescue, meant that he could be feeling the weight of responsibility of the death of children if it doesn't go well... It's such a highly charged emotional scenario."

Joel Edgerton (centre) in Thirteen Lives. Image: Prime Video.  

Beyond the challenging ordeal, the film also highlights the triumph of the human spirit and the length people around the world will go to in order to help a group of strangers.

It's this message that Edgerton hopes the audience will walk away with after watching the film. 

"I think there's just something special about human beings when the chips fall or when things are stacked up against us, as people we put aside so many things in order to help our fellow humans. There is such a core humanity to this story, that I think it's a good reminder that our nature as people, is to share and to help and to sacrifice for the sake of other people."

"I'm really happy that there's a movie about this because I think it's a really good time, after these last few years, for us to be reminded of how good we are."

Thirteen Lives is now streaming on Prime Video.

Feature Image: Prime Video.