This electrically intense film about the former world No 4 tennis champion Jelena Dokic made my heart pound and my eyes well up; there hasn’t been an Australian sports documentary as visceral since 2019’s The Final Quarter, which unpacks the career of the former AFL player Adam Goodes. Just as any film focusing on Goodes must address the racism directed at him by the media and public, any film about Dokic needs to incorporate her father, Damir, a volcanically volatile headline-maker many of us remember observing on television through the slits of our fingers.
The centrality of Damir to Dokic’s story gives any account of her achievements a terribly bittersweet tang. But in some ways it also makes those achievements more resounding: watching this documentary, there were times when I was impressed to hear that Dokic managed to turn up to matches, let alone triumph.
