The legendary Armenian sportsman Shavarsh Karapetyan's feat will be filmed. The project is being worked out by Logos Film Company (Russia). The company's official website says that the film will be entitled "The Twenty Lives".
Karapetyan is better known in the former USSR for one particular day of his life, September 16, 1976. On that day, training with his brother Kamo, also a finswimmer, by running alongside Lake Yerevan, Karapetyan had just completed his usual distance of 20 km (12 mi) when he heard the sound of the crash and saw the sinking trolleybus which had gone out of control and fallen from the dam wall. The trolleybus lay at the bottom of the reservoir some 25 metres (80 ft) offshore at a depth of 10 metres (33 ft). Karapetyan swam to it and, despite conditions of almost zero visibility, due to the silt rising from the bottom, broke the back window with his legs. The trolleybus was crowded, it carried 92 passengers and Karapetyan knew he had little time, spending some 30 to 35 seconds for each person he saved. Karapetyan managed to rescue 20 people (he picked up more, but 20 of them survived), but this ended his sports career: the combined effect of cold water and the multiple wounds he received (scratched by glass), left him unconscious for 45 days. Subsequent sepsis, due to the presence of raw sewage in the lake water, and lung complications prevented him from continuing his sports career.
Karapetyan is an 11-time finswimming World Record-breaker, 17-time world champion and 13- time champion of Europe. He was later awarded a UNESCO "Fair Play" award for his heroism. A main belt asteroid, 3027 Shavarsh, discovered by Nikolai Chernykh, was named after him.