--- name: "Alex Parkinson" canonical: "https://film.one/person/alex-parkinson" roles: ["Producer","Director"] reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "producer" average_over: 0 updated: "2026-09-21T02:13:36.602103+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Alex Parkinson Producer and director. ## Details - **Work:** Producer, Director - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q115284261, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1950742/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2202407 ## Streaming the US now - **Peacock:** [*Last Breath*](https://film.one/film/last-breath-2025.md) (66) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Alex Parkinson > A documentary maker who has so far made one fiction film, and made it out of his own documentary. Parkinson is good at rooms, valves and how a thing works, and not yet as sure about the people who work it. The saturation chamber in *Last Breath* (2025) is a steel tube of bunks and valves aboard the ship. Grant Montgomery built it so low that Woody Harrelson has to duck, and Alex Parkinson gets more out of three men eating dinner in it than out of anything set on land. That is the Parkinson habit, on the evidence of one fiction film: put the camera where the work is, explain the work in as few lines as possible, and trust the audience to keep up. The script covers saturation diving in about four lines and one well-chosen shot. Most thrillers would have taken a scene and a whiteboard. He came to it sideways. Parkinson started as a television editor, then spent more than twenty years directing documentaries, among them episodes of *River Monsters* and work for the BBC and National Geographic. With Richard da Costa he co-directed the 2019 documentary *Last Breath*, about a 2012 saturation-diving accident in the North Sea, with the real people on camera. Then came *Lucy, the Human Chimp* (2021) and *Living with Leopards* (2024), the latter filmed in Botswana over more than two years. We have not reviewed the documentaries, so we will not judge them, but the pattern is plain enough: specialised worlds, patient watching, a story that already exists before the camera turns up. The 2025 *Last Breath* is that documentary told again with actors, written with Mitchell LaFortune and David Brooks, and it shows what the training carries over and what it does not. What carries is procedure. The middle stretch is as tense as this genre gets, and we sat forward for the whole of it, because Parkinson never lets us lose track of which valve, which line, which man. What does not carry is character. The people on either side of the accident stay about as sketched as their radio call signs, and a week later you will not remember anyone's name. Harrelson's Duncan, with a paperback and a remark for every situation, is the film's only source of ease, and he is the exception. In a documentary the real faces do that work for free. In fiction somebody has to write it. Parkinson has said of the film, "I wanted to make the audience feel smart." He does; it runs 93 minutes and wastes none of them on condescension. The next test is whether he can make us feel for the people as well as for the problem, and whether he can do it with a story he has not already told once. One good fiction film built on one good idea is a start. We would go and see the second. ## Biography Alex Parkinson is a British director and writer whose work spans documentaries and narrative features. He began his career in television as an editor before moving into documentary filmmaking, with credits including episodes of *River Monsters* and the series *Primal Survivor*. Parkinson directed and wrote the 2019 documentary *Last Breath*, which he later adapted into his debut scripted feature of the same name, released in 2025. The film stars Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu and Finn Cole. His other directing credits include the Netflix documentary *Living with Leopards* (2024) and the television film *Lucy, the Human Chimp* (2021). He is twice nominated for Emmy awards. *Sources: imdb.com, rts.org.uk, thewrap.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Last Breath* (2025), Fi1m 66, Director, Writer, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/last-breath-2025.md) ## Complete filmography (4) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Last Breath* (2025), Director, Writer, Executive Producer — Fi1m 66, [page](https://film.one/film/last-breath-2025.md) - *Living with Leopards* (2024), Director - *Lucy the Human Chimp* (2021), Director, Director of Photography, Writer - *Last Breath* (2019), Writer, Director of Photography, Director, Producer --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/alex-parkinson