Within the opening scene of the long-awaited film “The Swimmers,” recently released on Netflix, Syrian sisters Yusra and Sara Mardini float face-down in a swimming pool, competing to see who can hold their breath the longest. A pink watch marks the time passing by, millisecond by millisecond. It’s 2011 in a Damascus suburb, the primary yr within the civil war that can ultimately see a whole lot of hundreds of Syrians killed and tens of millions displaced. But at that moment, the scene still stays calm. Around them, children are learning to swim on inflatable rings and alligators, parents are hovering over the water, music is blaring from speakers. Because the sisters finally rise to the surface, we wonder: How long will this scene of strange life last? How much time do these sisters have left before every part changes?
“The Swimmers” follows the now-famous story of the Mardini sisters, competitive swimmers who escaped the war in Syria in 2015, at the peak of the so-called refugee crisis in Europe, crossing the ocean from Turkey to Greece on a rubber dinghy. They were partway through the passage when the inflatable boat, which was meant for seven people but had been filled with 20 by smugglers, began to fill with water. Realizing that the dinghy would sink beneath a lot weight, the sisters jumped into the water, swimming alongside it and supporting it for hours until it reached shore. In a story that became known all over the world, Yusra later joined the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team, competing within the butterfly within the Rio Olympics in 2016. The identical young woman who had swum to safety and risked her life to assist others was now swimming on a world stage and galvanizing tens of millions.
“The Swimmers” follows the now-famous story of the Mardini sisters, competitive swimmers who escaped the war in Syria in 2015, crossing the ocean from Turkey to Greece on a rubber dinghy.
“The Swimmers” is targeted on the bonds of sisterhood, and the main points of the painful journey that took Yusra and Sara out of their strange lives in Damascus and on the treacherous path to Germany. It’s a film intent on telling the story through the lens of how they really experienced it, not how the skin world projected it onto them.
Sally El Hosaini, the Welsh-Egyptian director of the film, recently wrote that, as a baby growing up in Egypt, she never saw young women like herself on screen. In “The Swimmers,” El Hosaini casts real-life Lebanese sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa to play the Mardini sisters, their connection evident throughout the film, which is essentially in Arabic and beautifully translated into English. Nathalie, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the real-life Yusra Mardini (and who learned easy methods to swim to play the role), captures the girl who’s wanting to follow the ambitions of her swimming coach father, orienting her life toward representing Syria within the Olympics. Manal embodies Sara Mardini, the older and rebellious sister, fierce and vulnerable to partying, who begins to query the purpose of still swimming as lots of her friends die and the remainder flee to Europe.
Though the film opens near Yusra’s Thirteenth-birthday party, the primary month of the war in Syria, it quickly skips ahead to 4 years later in 2015. By then, soldiers openly wander the streets of Damascus. A bus the ladies are traveling on is targeted by snipers. Though Yusra stays focused on making the Syrian Olympic team, her dream is interrupted when, during a swim meet, a missile drops into the water of the swimming pool.
The clock is clearly running out.
We’re completely drawn into the movement of the waves, the wailing of a baby, the panic of passengers.
Since the film relies on real-life events, the plot is decided by several other real-life clocks ticking within the background. One is the 2016 Olympic Games the next yr, which Yusra hopes to qualify for, if it just isn’t too dangerous for her to proceed training. But one other, more complex bureaucratic clock is at play. The yr 2015 is probably the most dangerous within the Syrian war and likewise a yr by which real-life Yusra Mardini continues to be 17. The sisters must escape to Europe before Yusra turns 18. As a minor in Europe, she’s going to have the ability to use for family reunification, which can allow her parents and younger sister to hitch them in Germany by traveling by plane, not risking their lives on the ocean crossing. Yet there stays a catch. To turn into a refugee, in Yusra’s eyes, means not belonging to any country. She will likely be stateless, unlikely to have the ability to compete for Syria and never yet capable of compete for Germany.
Once the sisters persuade their father that they need to travel to Europe, they’re joined by their cousin Nizar, a young D.J. and student. They fly to Turkey where they discover a smuggler, who takes them by bus to the coast. There, they’re left alongside other refugees without food and water until finally being put onto a crowded, patched-up rubber boat, pushed into the ocean and abandoned.
The ocean crossing is at the middle of the film, and it’s difficult to not feel seasick while watching it. El Hosaini doesn’t take any pains to slow it down. We’re completely drawn into the movement of the waves, the wailing of a baby, the panic of passengers who have no idea easy methods to swim and, finally, the dinghy filling up with water as night approaches. We’re always made aware of how tiny they’re against the enormity of the ocean. Because the passengers begin to panic, it’s Sara—the rebellious older sister—who takes charge of the situation. She addresses those on the dinghy and asks: “Who here knows easy methods to swim?”
“The Swimmers” depicts the tender relationships between refugees traveling together, many who’re played by refugee actors.
When she sees a show of hands, she instructs: “People together with your hands up—select someone with their hands down. It’s your duty to assist them. It’s your responsibility.”
Sara’s instructions turn into the challenge of the film. Who amongst us knows easy methods to swim? What responsibilities do we feature consequently? How are we called to supply our gifts for others? From then on, the film just isn’t a lot concerning the sisters’ physical journey, but about their slow discovery that, should they survive, they’ve something inside them to supply those refugees still struggling along the way in which.
As I watched the film, I used to be stunned by the main points of the crossing: passengers praying from the Quran, throwing their belongings into the water, tying shoes to a backpack to maintain them dry. I soon learned why the scene is so authentic. The film’s associate producer was Hassan Akkad, a Syrian filmmaker who was thrown into prison for protesting against the Syrian government. After he was released and decided to flee to Europe as a refugee, he filmed his journey. When he crossed the ocean from Turkey to Greece, his own dinghy began to sink. Because the refugees on it nearly drowned, Akkad in some way continued filming, obtaining footage that later became a part of the BAFTA-award-winning series “Exodus: Our Journey to Europe.” Today he’s a filmmaker in London. It’s no wonder that the scene of the crossing in “The Swimmers” was painfully accurate. Akkad himself had lived it.
That’s only considered one of the various beautiful, authentic scenes within the film that make it so price watching. “The Swimmers” depicts the tender relationships between refugees traveling together, many who’re played by refugee actors. It doesn’t draw back from a number of the war’s most difficult topics. Why is Yusra’s talent valued so far more in Europe than those of so many others who escaped? Why are refugees from some countries treated as more worthy than others? For a lot of viewers, probably the most painful scenes, resembling that of the Greek café owner who refuses them water, or the bureaucratic office employee who examines their asylum case, may additionally challenge us to look at where we discover ourselves. And while we may be expecting a completely happy ending, viewers will likely be left stunned after reading the reasons through the end credits of where the Mardini sisters and their family find themselves today.
“The Swimmers” succeeds since it takes a story that we thought that we knew and complicates it. Who’re the actual heroes on this narrative? Is it Yusra, who ultimately swims within the Olympics? Sara, who jumps into the water first to assist others who might drown? Their father, who gave his life to raising his girls to be independent? Is it their cousin Nizar, who struggles with the humiliation of not succeeding in Europe but at all times sleeps on the ground in order that his cousins can have the bed? Sven, the German coach who drops every part to coach them?
The film doesn’t seek to reply the query but to explore the ties that bind us, the proven fact that no considered one of us can carry every part alone. We want each other. The fantastic thing about the film is in the way in which by which almost every considered one of its characters is revealed to be a “swimmer”—taking over the responsibility of carrying others once they turn into aware of their very own gifts. It’s a celebration not only of survival but of those that—within the face of danger and discrimination—still find ways to guide each other to shore.