Photo: Courtesy Prime Video
And, yes, we do hear from those who know Djokovic best—most prominently his wife, Jelena, but also tennis writers, childhood friends, and former players (led by Andre Agassi, who deserves some sort of award for Most Insightful Commentary From a Talking Head in a Documentary Film).
Yet expectations are also delightfully confounded as The Wolf in Winter wades into issues lesser documentaries would likely avoid. It faces head-on Djokovic’s complicated relationship with the tennis establishment and tennis fans, many of whom seemed to hold a bit of a grudge against the man who would eventually win 24 Grand Slams because he came along to spoil the almost perfectly constructed rivalry between the brash Nadal and the impossibly elegant Federer.
This is a feature, not a bug, of the film. “For what we do, polarizing is great,” noted Hehir at a private screening of the film last month at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. “Polarizing means that someone is misunderstood—it probably means that they feel they’re misunderstood—and we, as filmmakers, love to dive into that.”
Photo: Courtesy Prime Video
We hear Djokovic’s explanation—in his words and Jelena’s, among others—of what seemed to the outside world like a petulant own-goal in the midst of the COVID pandemic, as he was refused entry to Australia in 2022 due to his unvaccinated status. For the record, this is the fullest rendering of the situation I’ve yet seen, and it gives a lot of credence to Djokovic’s stance and his appraisal of the situation. That said, if there’s a single example of Djokovic’s admitted stubbornness that still seems like a self-inflicted wound, it’s this.
