WATERMARKS (Yaron Zilberman, France/Israel/USA). 77 min. Subtitled. Monday (May 9), 7:30 pm. Bloor. Rating: NNN Rating: NNN
First-time director Yaron Zilberman reunites several members of Austria’s legendary Hakoah women’s swim team for a few laps in the pool where they trained, some 65 years after they fled the Nazis.
We first meet the feisty octogenarians in their adopted homes (England, Israel and the U.S.), and understandably most of them feel ambivalent about returning to Vienna, where painful memories resurface.
The climactic swim in the pool is terribly moving, and the personable women make great camera subjects. (There’s nothing quite like seeing a bunch of 80-year-old women cooing over old photos of the men’s water polo team.) But Zilberman doesn’t explore in much depth the idea of Jewish athletes and how that affected the Third Reich.
Maybe there’s another documentary in that.
