Lucía Puenzo and Karla Souza Address the Issue of Harassment in Sports with 'Dive' – Nominated for International Emmys

By Sandra M Ríos U
X: @sandritamrios

Lucía Puenzo directs and writes this feature film, released last year, which addresses sexual harassment in the world of sports.

"Dive," inspired by real events, has just been nominated for two International Emmy Awards.

The protagonist of this great film is Karla Souza, who is also a co-producer of the project. She is a key figure in its realization, as she was determined to bring this story to the screen and provoke a strong reflection on a topic that is often avoided. Over the last ten years, the Mexican actress faced the challenge of finding allies, finding resonance with Argentine filmmaker Lucía Puenzo, who co-wrote the script with a group of women (Mónica Herrera, Samara Ibrahim, María Renée Prudencio, and Tatiana Mereñuk), taking into account various testimonies from athletes of both sexes. In addition to exploring her role as a producer in a project like this and pushing herself as an actress to portray a high-performance diver as realistically as possible, Souza exposed attempts at legal action by a person from the Mexican Swimming Federation.

A year before the release of this feature film, French director Charlène Favier visited Bogotá following the Colombian premiere of her semi-biographical film "Slalom," which exposed the sordid world behind high-level competition with cases of harassment and sexual abuse in sports. Favier's film focuses on a teenager who belongs to a ski school, where she finds stability, security, and a coach who understands her adolescent struggles and bets everything on her. The problem is that in these dynamics between coach and pupil, reprehensible boundaries are crossed.

"Dive" follows a similar path. These films are not only linked by their theme but also by their tone and the way they choreograph scenes, aesthetics, and the clear message they want to convey. While the French film is set in mountain sports, this one is set in swimming, following the story of Mariel, a veteran diver who has one last chance to make it to the Olympics and win the gold. She has trained hard with her longtime partner, but the partner gets injured and is sidelined. The spot is given to a 14-year-old girl who becomes the revelation of the Mexican team. That is precisely the age at which Mariel started, and what Nadia begins to experience reopens an undeniable past that puts Mariel in an internal conflict, opening the possibility of reconciliation with herself and, in the process, setting a precedent.

Lucía Puenzo creates a film marked by tension, by the constant sense that something is not right in that ambiguous and unhealthy relationship they have with the coach. She also accurately reflects all the pressures that arise when an uncomfortable truth comes to light and affects an entire environment, while skillfully recreating training and competition scenes in the water. Karla Souza is truly extraordinary in this film, portraying a physically and psychologically complex character, full of nuances and with the mission to be a heroine in an environment where harassment and abuse had been normalized. Ultimately, this is the point both films aim to reach, making them incredibly valuable to watch.

International Emmy Awards, which celebrate television productions, are organized by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, established in 1969 and headquartered in New York. This year, the nominations include productions from countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Japan, India, and South Korea. The award ceremony for the 51st edition will take place on November 20th. The feature film is nominated in the categories of TV Movie/Mini-Series and Best Performance by an Actress.

"Dive" can be viewed in Latin America through Prime Video.

* Part of this review was published on December 1, 2022, in the newspaper El Nuevo Siglo.

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