Last January, just before the pandemic hit, Israeli filmmaker Dalit Kimor brought her new documentary, “Mrs. G,” to the New York Jewish Film Festival.
The documentary profiles pioneering fashion designer and entrepreneur Lea Gottlieb (1918-2012), a Holocaust survivor who, upon emigrating from her native Hungary to Israel in 1949, founded and ran the well-known swimwear company Gottex — a brand name that turned out to be familiar to many in attendance at Film at Lincoln Center in New York.
“I started the film and I asked all the people in the room, which were mostly older people, ‘How many of you wore Gottex bathing suits when you were young?’” Kimor said in a recent phone interview from Ramat Gan in Israel. “About two-thirds of the crowd raised their hands.”