Watermarks is the story of the champion women swimmers of the legendary Jewish sports club, Hakoah Vienna. Hakoah ("The Strength" in Hebrew) was founded in 1909 in response to the notorious Aryan Paragraph, which forbade Austrian sports clubs from accepting Jewish athletes. Its founders were eager to popularize sport among a community renowned for such great minds as Freud, Mahler and Zweig, but traditionally alien to physical recreation. Hakoah rapidly grew into one of Europe's biggest athletic clubs, while achieving astonishing success in many diverse sports. In the 1930s Hakoah's best-known triumphs came from its women swimmers, who dominated national competitions in Austria. After the Anschluss, in 1938, the Nazis shut down the club, but the swimmers all managed to flee the country before the war broke out, thanks to an escape operation initiated by Hakoah's functionaries. Sixty-five years later, director Yaron Zilberman meets the members of the swimming team in their homes around...

Starring:

Hanni Lux, Judith Haspel, Anni Lampl, Elisheva Susz, Trude Hirschler, Greta Stanton, Nanne Selinger, Ann Marie Pisker, Boris Eder, Florian Schäfer, Rudi Luksch, Gerhard Heger, Fritz von Friedl, Sandra Bohle, Stefanie Dvorak

Genre:

Documentary, History, Sport