Cast overview: | |||
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Hanni Lux | ... | Self (as Hanni Deutsch Lux) |
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Judith Haspel | ... | Self (as Judith Deutsch Haspel) |
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Anni Lampl | ... | Self |
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Elisheva Susz | ... | Self (as Elisheva Schmidt Susz) |
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Trude Hirschler | ... | Self (as Trude Platzek Hirschler) |
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Greta Stanton | ... | Self (as Greta Wertheimer Stanton) |
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Nanne Selinger | ... | Self |
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Ann Marie Pisker | ... | Self (as Ann Marie Pick Pisker) |
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Boris Eder | ... | Self - cabaret singer |
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Florian Schäfer | ... | Self - pianist |
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Rudi Luksch | ... | Self - musician |
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Gerhard Heger | ... | Self - musician |
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Fritz von Friedl | ... | Dr. Rosenfeld (voice) (as Fritz von Freide) |
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Sandra Bohle | ... | Elisheva (voice) |
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Stefanie Dvorak | ... | Hanni (voice) |
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... Written by Yofi Films
Watermarks is a very interesting and touching movie, about a group of 6 Jewish women swimmers who were part of Hakoach Vienna - a Jewish sport club in Vienna,before world war two. The director did a superb job in creating contact and sensitively interviewing these women, now in their eighties. Through the stories of Hacoach and the Jewish swimmers, the history of the Jewish community in Vienna, antisemitism and world war two, unfold. I enjoyed and was deeply touched by the movie, and by the personalities of the swimmers.