Julie Gautier

Julie Gautier, originally from Réunion Island, is a freediver, filmmaker, model, and dancer. Her father, a spearfisherman, introduced her to the sport at the age of eleven, which led her to discover freediving as a competitive sport around the age of 18.

As a freediver, Julie Gautier competed in the World Championships in Nice in 2000 and in the French Championships in 2006 and 2007, where she broke records with a dive to a depth of 65 metres in 2006 and then 68 metres in 2007 in the constant weight category, which involves diving along a cable without touching it.

Julie is also an underwater model and dancer. In 2005, she participated in artist Gregory Colbert’s multimedia project “Ashes & Snow,” which gave her the opportunity to dance underwater with marine animals around the globe. Together with freediving champion Guillaume Néry, she founded the audiovisual production company Les Films Engloutis in 2010.

More recently, she served as director and actor for Garth Davis’s film Mary Magdalene (2018), in which she directed all the underwater footage and served as the stunt double for lead actress Rooney Mara. She also directed the biopic titled “One Breath” about Russian freediver Natalia Molchanova. In 2018, she danced underwater in the dreamlike and poetic film “Ama,” which she directed. In 2019, a documentary simply titled “Julie” explored her career, her life, and her projects. That same year, Julie Gautier directed a new film, “One Breath Around The World”, alongside Guillaume Néry. The film is a mesmerizing underwater journey around the globe and its oceans, attracting more than 12 million viewers.

Since then, Julie has initiated and participated in several major projects on both sides of the camera, including advertising campaigns, music videos (such as “Runnin” for Naughty Boy, featuring Beyoncé and Arrow Benjamin), and documentaries, notably the environmental short film “Bakelite,” produced by Imagine 2050 and dedicated to protecting the oceans from plastic pollution. She is also the creator of a new dance discipline, Aqua Dance Flow, which she now teaches successfully, offering workshops in France and abroad.

Her films and documentaries – distinguished by the fact that she herself is freediving while behind the camera – are imbued with great elegance and a unique beauty stemming from the original combination of freediving and dance. Underwater dance is not just any ordinary activity, as it requires both exceptional athletic ability and remarkable grace. The movements are mostly performed with a majestic slowness, due both to the breath control required by freediving and to the fact that water, unlike air, slows down all movement. It is this hypnotic and sublime slowness that gives Julie Gautier’s work its highly aesthetic and unique character.  – A. Fortin-Tournès