No./17
The Swimmers
[ ON-SET REPORT] The true story of an Olympic athlete and her sister fleeing Syria gets the feature-length treatment
Sarah (Nathalie Issa) in training;
WHERE? Duxford Airfield, Cambridge.
WHEN? 11 May 2021.
WHY? To visit the set of Sally El Hosaini’s Syrian-refugee biopic, which follows two swimming sisters on a harrowing journey from war-torn Damascus to the 2016 Rio Olympics, where one competed. With three siblings himself, screenwriter Jack Thorne understood how to showcase Yusra and Sarah Mardini’s story, tracking their emotional departure from home, familial tension, and water-based acts of heroism. But Welsh-Egyptian El Hosaini has helped Thorne to authentically represent these Middle-Eastern women: “They’re like my friends and the people I grew up with,” she says.