Film Review: The Swimmers
The Swimmers
Working Title Films
Netflix
My Rating
6/10
#whatonwhatsgood Fan Club Rating
65%
#whatonwhatsgood The Swimmers Express Review
There's a war in Syria and Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini (Nathalie Issa) and her sister, Sara (Manal Issa) decided they needed to leave. The film is really about survival. Can these girls really make it to Germany without being harmed? What will they need to do to get out of Syria safely?
Overall, I think director Sally El Hosaini's' The Swimmers' did a fantastic job of telling this inspirational, heartfelt, and emotional true story. The film really shows what Yusra and Sara had to overcome along the way.
The only flaw I saw in the movie was that I thought they rushed Yusra's journey to make it to the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Release dates
September 8, 2022 (TIFF)
November 11, 2022
November 23, 2022 (Netflix)
Directed by
Sally El Hosaini
Screenplay by
Sally El Hosaini and Jack Thorne
Produced by
Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan, Ali Jaafar and Tim Cole
Starring
Nathalie Issa as Yusra Mardini
Manal Issa as Sara Mardini
Ahmed Malek as Nizar
Matthias Schweighöfer as Sven
James Krishna Floyd as Emad
Ali Suliman as Ezzat Mardini
Kinda Alloush as Mervat Mardini
Elmi Rashid Elmi as Bilal
Cinematography
Christopher Ross
Edited by
Iain Kitching
Music by
Steven Price
Sally El Hosaini Statement about The Swimmers
The Swimmers is a film about female emancipation that shows how inner strength rises out of suffering. It explores the power of ambition and freedom. Female ambition is so often a dirty word, but I wanted to celebrate it. I saw an opportunity to make complex heroes out of the type of modern, liberal Arab women who exist, but rarely appear on our screens. The type of Arab women I know, who Yusra and Sara are, who I am. That’s why this story resonated so deeply with me.
War turns everything on its head. The patriarchal, cultural and religious structures that preserve society are shaken. Ironically, if it hadn't been for the Syrian war, Yusra and Sara would not have been allowed to go on such a life changing journey. To have had the freedom to take their lives fully in their own hands and to have become the heroes they are. The film is very much about two inspirational heroes. The obvious, celebrated one in Yusra, but also the unsung hero in Sara.
But at its heart, this is a love story between sisters. As a middle child, both a big and little sister, it was essential to me that this emotional core was the focus of the film. Because no matter what our background, or where we're from, it’s this universal sibling relationship, the human story, that we all relate to. The journey to Germany, despite the obstacles it throws up, is an external one. The real journey is the internal one that Yusra and Sara go on separately, and together, as they overcome the difficulties they face and ultimately learn who they really are. They must accept their differences if they are to be able to love each other. For them, it's a journey from potential competitors to true sisterhood.
My ambition is to subvert the stereotypes of both refugees and young Arab women through the film. Not to portray them as victims who need to be liberated or outsiders. But to allow an audience in, to walk in their shoes. Because empathy is stronger than sympathy. I want the film to remind us that they are just regular people with full, regular lives, with hopes and dreams. Ordinary people who've had to make unimaginable choices, risking everything to survive. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said, “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” I want the characters to be as they are in real life; complete, complicated, three-dimensional people who contain multitudes.
It was very important to me that the film be entertaining and have an irreverent sense of fun despite the often-bleak subject matter. A sense of humour has gotten me through the toughest times in my own life and it was the same for Yusra and Sara. There's a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humour and hurt.
Manal discusses The Swimmers and her character Sara
“What was really nice about the script is that it showed every side of sisterhood. It's not about perfect sisterhood, it's about natural interactions.”
“Sara was this version of a woman who would leave her country, who would have responsibility on her shoulder and have a sister to protect.
“Sara now is very different from the film. She’s grown up and the person I met was someone who was really in need of being heard. I understood her because in the script, you can see the idea of fighting for something very impulsively, wanting to solve all the problems and everything around her. It was very touching.”
“If I had to work with someone else, we would have to create this [sisterly] feeling.”
“It's very hard when someone has to forgive someone or has to love someone so much. It's most of the time very controlled when you don't know them but because we're sisters, we’ve been through many unexpected things, many unexpected sides of love. When I worked with Nathalie, it was something deeper and thanks to the script, the feelings came out.”
“On set, it was because I was playing against my sister, I felt like I was playing me at first. There was so much connection with my sister, we really made each other strong every day. It was a really hard shoot but she reassured me. We were this duo that was inseparable. I could trust her suggestions because she's really experienced, and I learned a lot from watching her because it's not an easy job. Emotionally and professionally, it was the best to have her by my side.”
Manal suggested her own younger sister, Nathalie Issa for the role of Yusra. Nathalie discusses The Swimmers.
“Acting always seemed so far away. But it's funny because Manal said, ‘Okay, I'm doing a casting for this movie with swimming, and they are looking for a sister.’ And I was like, ‘Ah, no, forget about it. I don't want to do it. I don't know how to swim. I want to focus on my studies.’ I helped my sister do her [audition] tapes for the film and I became quite interested in the end. So I did the self-tape and met with Sally. Two years later I was cast.”
“I was really stressed at first. I was like, ‘Is she happy that I'm gonna play her?’ And then it was an instant connection. We just started speaking about our lives and it was as if we knew each other for a long time. Like two friends meeting and it went very well. We talked a bit about her journey. And she gave me a bit of her insight and I tried to use it.
“What really prepared me for the role was the feeling of being in the pool and wanting to swim and loving the swimming. I wasn't trying to copy things that Yusra does, it was just bringing myself, my experience into the character of Yusra, to create a new character, a mix of us. I was playing this person who loves to swim and who one day sees her life being changed and destroyed and tries to cope with it. I tried to think about my experiences, what made me sad in my life, what I loved in my life, and to bring it together to give my emotions to the character.”
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