The former star of the WTA circuit confides in front of the camera about the abuse she endured under the influence of a violent father during her career. The documentary is scheduled to be released in theaters on November 7, 2024.
Seven years after the publication of his autobiography, Unbreakable (Unbreakable), former world tennis star Jelena Dokic will soon evoke on the big screen the torment and abuse endured under the yoke of an evil father-coach, Damir Dokic.
The trailer for this documentary, based on the book published in 2017, and which will be shown in cinemas from November 7, was unveiled this week. The Australian, born in former Yugoslavia, recalls with a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes the ordeal that poisoned her sixteen-year career, the physical and psychological violence inflicted by a torturer father.
She returns in particular to this day when, at just 16 years old, she triumphed over world No. 1 Martina Hingis at Wimbledon. A success which should have been the starting point of a brilliant career, but which above all turned out to be the continuation of a nightmare. “I knew that if I lost, the consequences would be catastrophic. I knew what was going to happen. There wasn’t an inch of my skin that wasn’t covered in bruises.”
In his autobiography, Dokic already explained the mistreatment inflicted by his father after an early defeat in Montreal. “He hit me with his fist. Then he made me stand up straight and kicked me in the shins with his pointy dress shoes. When I cried out in pain, he kicked me forced me to put myself back in position and he started again.”
In an interview for the Australian podcast HeadgameDokic explained how her father was already mistreating her when she was just starting to hit her first balls (she started playing tennis at the age of 8). “Things just got worse, especially behind the scenes. When I lost that Wimbledon semi-final (to Lindsay Davenport, in 2000), I was crying while talking to my dad on the phone, and he was insulting me . He said I was a shame and a humiliation to our family. That evening, he forbade me to sleep at the hotel where we were staying. Finally, I kicked me out. spent the night in the players’ locker room, where the cleaning crew found me the next morning.”
Suicide attempt in 2022
In the documentary which traces the tragic story of Jelena Dokic, it is also a question of what the tennis world knew and what it could have done at the time to denounce the violence and change the life of a young woman. woman who suffered under the influence of a tyrant.
“With other players, I had already noticed the bruises on her body,” admits American Lindsay Davenport in the trailer.
For his part, the famous journalist Christopher Clarey, author of a fantastic biography of Roger Federer, asks: “Should I have dug deeper to reveal what was really going on?”
In June 2022, Jelena Dokic opened up about the depression she suffered after hitting rock bottom in her personal life. She notably revealed on her social networks that she almost committed suicide two months earlier after a romantic breakup: “I almost jumped from my balcony on the 26th floor, almost ended my life. I will never forget that day, everything was murky, everything was black, no sound, no light, nothing made sense.”
Jelena Dokic won six singles titles on the WTA circuit and reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 2000 (defeated against Lindsay Davenport). She rose to 4th in the world, the best ranking of her career, which ended in 2014. Jelena Dokic has since become a tennis consultant for Australian channels. She currently works for the Nine Network television channel where she serves as a commentator.
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