Whaakari/White Island eruption: Netflix release trailer for new documentary The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari

“I thought, ‘This is it. We’re going to die on our honeymoon’,” Matt Urey says next to his wife and Lauren.

The American couple survived the Whaakari/White Island eruption that killed 22 people and have been interviewed for a new Netflix documentary about the disaster.

The trailer for The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari has been released and is backed by Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio as an executive producer. It uses interviews with survivors and rescuers alongside footage from the island when it erupted in 2019.

Netflix has described the documentary as “a minute-by-minute account of tourists caught in a tragic volcanic eruption while sightseeing on an island off New Zealand in 2019″.

“The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari celebrates the survivors, as well as the everyday people who courageously came to their rescue”, the video’s description reads.

The trailer starts: “It was a beautiful day, you could feel the heat from the volcano.

“From the description, it was a nice, easy hike - they didn’t make it sound dangerous,” one interviewee says.

Whaakari/ White Island. Photo / File

The film is directed and produced by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rory Kennedy, and Ron Howard and DiCaprio are executive producers on the project.

The documentary will appear on Netflix on December 16.

The volcano off the Bay of Plenty coast erupted on December 9, 2019 at 2.11pm while 47 people were on the island. Twenty-two people died and 25 people suffered injuries, mostly severe burns.

Ten parties face criminal charges after the eruption under the Health and Safety at Work Act.