Sometimes a documentary comes along with the potential to overturn beliefs, communicate life-changing knowledge, instill fresh values, inspire confidence, or restore hope.
Dive: Rituals in Water does a little of each.
In Iceland, a physical educator named Snorri Magnusson commenced running a class in 1994, beginning with his own baby girls and a few others, encouraging infants to enjoy the water. He now runs many classes every week, both for infants and for developmentally disabled adults, playfully eliciting in them the natural joy of feeling free and safe in the water.
Dive: Rituals in Water does more than document. Its close cinematography of the experiences of infant swimming students and their parents reveals the deep humanity, sensitivity, and empathy emanating from Magnusson, who in the past 25 years has creatively and courageously combined training and inherent sensibility to transform the lives of 7000 babies, their delighted parents, and baby experts by empowering the infants to become utterly comfortable in playing and swimming in the pool.
A work of profound beauty and deep importance and created with subtlety and sensitivity, Dive: Rituals in Water reveals through stunning visuals and clever sound capture the filmmaker’s own sensitivity and depth of understanding. It deserves accolades for its power to transmit to viewers everywhere the joy of water babies.
Stronger Than Fiction is a festival so brief that, if you blink, you’ll miss a great movie. If you’re unlucky enough to miss the second scheduled session of Dive: Rituals in Water, you may yet be able to persuade the festival to screen it again as an encore. If you manage to catch it, it will keep you smiling for many laps.
