7 Beats Per Minute takes the audience into the life and underwater world of Jessea Lu, the first Chinese female freediving champion. With intimate cinéma vérité camerawork, and Director Yuqi Kang’s, unique personal voice, we travel with Jessea on her unwavering journey to become a world champion.

An accomplished pharmaceutical advisor by day and top freediver during her free time, Jessea unflinchingly commits herself to everything she does. In 2018, Jessea’s life was nearly cut short when she blacked out 20 meters underwater during her last world-record attempt: a dive of 93 meters. She was lifeless for four minutes.

After coming face-to-face with death, instead of quitting, Jessea decides to continue her training–preparing and sharpening her skills with the rigor of the world’s most preeminent competitors. In 2022, we follow Jessea’s return to the world freediving stage as she emerges with a bigger, more dangerous goal: reaching 100 meters depth in the same contest she nearly died in 2018. 7 Beats Per Minute is more than a straightforward extreme sports film, it tells a complex, nuanced, immersive tale of an extreme sport as experienced by the athlete; it is a film that takes viewers into the psyche of a freediver–a young woman who aims for unparalleled achievement as bold, independent professionals in worlds vastly different than where she came from.

7 Beats Per Minute is a participant of the 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab.