Editor’s Note: The following are spoilers for the Netflix movie The Swimmers.
Based on true events Sally El HosainiX Swimmers sheds light on the life of Sarah Mardini (Manal Issa) and Yusra Mardini (Natalie Issa), two Syrian refugees who leave their war-torn country to find a new life in Europe. The latter of the two went on to represent the refugee Olympic team at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But the best thing about Hosaini’s biographical drama is not just the grandiosity of the achievement and bravery of the Mardini sisters. There are many inspiring moments in the film that make you Swimmers touching drama, based on the refugee crisis. While the three-hour sailing in the Aegean is the defining moment of the film’s storyline, there are many other events that will leave viewers in awe and shock. With the story of a refugee making it to the Olympic stage, it’s worth asking how much Swimmers dramatized to present a tale of courage and quick wits. Although Hosaini agreed to do the fiction in favor of the larger refugee crisis, it is worth examining how much these fictions deviate the film’s depiction from Mardini’s real story.
Sally El Hossain and Jack Thorne begin the story of Yusra and Sarah Mardini long before they actually fled Syria. Swimmers begins in 2011, when the flames of the “Arab Spring” were just beginning to reach Syria and the Syrian revolution was beginning to take shape. Amid the ensuing chaos, Mohamed Ezzat Mardini (Ali Suliman), a former national swimmer, continues to train his daughter Yusra and Sarah in the hope that they will one day represent Syria in the Olympics. While seventh grader Yusra is focused on her father’s goal, Sarah is shown to be politically aware of the crisis unfolding in the country. Swimmer then fast forward four years to 2015, when Yusra and Sarah leave Syria to somehow make it to Europe and find shelter for their family in accordance with the family reunification policy.
Was there really a pool scene?
Conditions in Syria were very similar (or possibly worse) to Syria by 2015 when the Mardini made the decision to send Yusra and Sara to Europe along with their two cousins. Although it can be said that Swimmers left a few details about the conditions under which Yusra and Sarah were expelled from Syria. A detail the film doesn’t show is that the family’s home was destroyed and Ezzat Mardini was arrested and tortured by paramilitaries after being mistaken for someone else.
Perhaps in the film’s most impressive scene, an unexploded bomb pierced the roof of the pool where Yusra was training. This event, which actually triggers Mardini’s decision to send Yusra and Sarah to Europe, actually took place. While it may not be as dramatic as portrayed by Hossaini, Yusra’s closeness to death in this scene was inspired by a real incident, and she continues to depict conditions in Syria at the time.
Valiant swim across the Aegean
The sisters’ journey to Europe is depicted in the film quite realistically. The journey, which lasted 25 days, began with the sisters flying from Damascus via Lebanon to Turkey. Upon reaching Turkey, they contacted a smuggler who helped them get to Mytilene, the capital of the Greek island of Lesvos. As in the movie, the two sisters had to wait quite a long time before heading to the Greek island by boat. However, the film misses a detail: the sisters had to wait almost four days before they went to the Greek island.
The journey itself began on a disastrous note, with a small boat waiting for them to take them to Europe, rather than a real boat. About 20 minutes later, the overcrowded boat’s engine broke down. As seen in the Netflix movie, Sarah was the first to jump into the water, followed by Yusra. Two others also joined the sisters in helping to save the boat from total sinking for the sake of those who couldn’t swim in the boat.
Yusra Mardini’s Journey to Berlin
Sara said Fashion that most of all she was worried about Mustafa, a 6-year-old boy who accompanied them. AT swimmers, in fact, it is depicted with a child who is on board. After more than three hours, they were finally able to touch the ground when they reached the island of Lesbos. It is also shown in the film that during the journey they contacted a Greek cameraman who refused to assist the group. However, most likely, this is a fictional detail added to add drama. In the same scene, Yusra is seen throwing her swimming medals into the water, which is another fictional incident, as Yusra herself revealed that she lost all of her possessions when her house was destroyed. But the scene still conveys Yusra’s emotions about the loss of her most prized possession. The fictionalization also includes Sarah having some affection for one of the members of the refugee group, Emad.
However, the hardships for the sisters were not over, as they faced discrimination and ill-treatment from the residents, as shown by Hosaini. From there, the sisters traveled overland through Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary. In her own words, Yousra described her trip to Hungary as “terrible”. In the film, Yusra is shown to have been attacked by a man during her stay in the country. But this detail did not surface anywhere else in the numerous retellings of the daring journey of Yusra and Sarah through Europe. The sisters are finally finding refuge in Germany as Angela Merkel openly welcomed Syrian refugees in 2015.
Swimming to Olympic glory for Yusra Mardini
In the film, Yusra is seen promising his father that he will keep training when he gets to Berlin. In fact, she kept her promise. After learning about the local swimming club Wasserfreunde Spandau 04 from an interpreter at a refugee camp, Sarah and Yusra managed to give it a try. At the club they met Sven Spannekrebs (Matthias Schweighofer) who not only took them in but also expedited paperwork to help them access housing and training facilities. According to swimmers, Yusra’s swimming career would have been reduced to local swimming competitions if the International Olympic Committee had not decided in March 2016 to form a refugee Olympic team. But Sven has already started talking to the authorities about Yusra’s chances of competing in the Tokyo Olympics. Luckily for Yusra, the IOC’s decision helped shorten the wait for the Olympic dream as, with the help of her mentor Sven Yusra, Mardini continued to represent the refugee Olympic team in Rio in 2016.
On the other hand, Sarah did not show much interest in a swimmer’s career. Judging by the film and reality, Sarah decided that she wanted to help refugees like her who were dying in the hope of finding a new life. After the events of the film, Sarah enrolled at Bard College in Berlin and began volunteering at the International Emergency Response Centre, an NGO based in Lesbos. In 2018, Sarah was arrested by the Greek authorities and placed in the Koriallos maximum security prison on charges of smuggling people for a criminal organization. Her arrest even sparked criticism of Greece by Amnesty International for criminalizing Sarah’s humanitarian work.
Description of everything shown in Swimmers Sally El Hosaini concludes that much of the film is based on true events, with a few twists to add drama to an already interesting story. Hosaini made an attempt to shed light on the larger refugee crisis through the story of Yusra and Sarah Mardini. Thus, it becomes clear that events have repeatedly been shaped to voice the horrors that refugees around the world face. To achieve the same, the story of Yusra and Sarah was also used as a vehicle to convey a message. Obviously, the changes were made with Yusra’s approval. Despite minor differences between the events of the film and the actual events that inspired them, Swimmers manages to respect the real struggle of the people whose voices echo throughout the runtime.
Source: Collider
