THE SWIMMERS
MIND THE GAP | WORLD
US, UK, 2022 | Director: Sally El Hosaini
Yusra Mardini cherished one goal: To swim for Syria’s Olympic team. But that aspiration seemed dashed when her homeland’s civil war made her a refugee. Sally El Hosaini’s second feature, after her lauded 2013 debut My Brother the Devil, chronicles the incredible real-life story of Yusra (Nathalie Issa) and her sister Sarah (Manal Issa), as they make the perilous trek from the suburbs of Damascus to start life (and training) anew in Berlin. An idyllic candy-colored poolside childhood gives way to a meaner palette of life on the run in an epic drama that portrays these tough-minded teenagers’ courage in fleeing in an overcrowded dinghy, spending hours bobbing in the sea beside it to keep it afloat, and later, drawing attention to the worldwide refugee crisis. Through it all El Hosaini never lets us forget that these are simply girls like any others, with dreams. —Shari Kizirian
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