The Swimmers Review: A Drama Film Based on A True Story and Available Exclusively On Netflix
Cast: Nathalie Issa, Manal Issa, Ahmed Malek, Matthias Schweighöfer, James Krishna Floyd, Ali Suliman, Kinda Alloush
Director: Sally El Hosaini
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The Swimmers is the new film available on Netflix, directed and written by Sally El Hosaini, with the collaboration of Jack Thorne on the screenplay. The film is inspired by the true story of two Syrian sisters who fought with everything they had to get from the war in their country to the 2016 Rio Olympics. The film, which promises to be very strong and emotional, is produced by Tim Bevan for Working Title and by Eric Fellner, Ali Jaafar and Tim Cole with Stephen Daldry as executive producer.
The Swimmers Review: The Story
The Swimmers is inspired by the true story of Yusra and Sara Mardini, two Syrian sisters who fled their homeland in 2015 due to the civil war. Arriving in Europe almost by a miracle (they had to push and pull the boat carrying them along with other refugees due to engine failure), they went from Greece on foot to Germany, where Yusra, an aspiring Olympic champion, managed to get accepted for the 2016 races as a member of the newly formed team created specifically for athletes who, for obvious reasons, cannot represent their home country. A partial disadvantage, as Yusra had to prove that he was there on merit and not, as some inferences on the field claimed, out of pity from the Olympic Committee.
Sara and Yusra Mardini at the center of the plot of The Swimmers are two teenagers who love to swim (and are very good at it) who live on the outskirts of Darayaa, in Damascus. Together with them is also the younger sister, the mother and the father, who is a former swimmer and now acts as a strict coach to the sisters. The war in Syria, however, seems destined to clip the wings of their competitive dreams and all those of their peers, such as their cousin Nizar. The bombs are the backdrop to their reunions. Sara reveals that she is no longer interested in swimming under the circumstances. Yusra, on the other hand, still dreams of the Olympics.
The two sisters try to convince their father to seek asylum in Germany before Yusra can turn 18. In this way, they may request their family to join them. The father refuses because he fears for their safety as refugees. The situation worsens quickly: the sisters and the cousin decide to flee by the sea together. They pass by the island of Lesvos, desperately looking for a shred of hope to keep fighting for their dreams. Fate has a big surprise in store for them.
The Swimmers Review and Analysis
The two protagonists have the faces of the real sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa (the second, a French professional actress of Lebanese origin, acted for Bertrand Bonello and appears in Memory Box, acclaimed at the Berlinale in 2021, while the first is making her debut as an interpreter main after having a minor role in My Favorite Fabric, presented at Cannes in 2018). The most famous presence in the film is undoubtedly that of the actor chosen to play the trainer of the duo: the German star Matthias Schweighöfer, known internationally, again through Netflix, for having starred in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead and later directed the prequel Army of Thieves.
Yusra and Sara’s story is passionate and inspiring, so it’s no surprise that they wanted to bring it to the screen. And yet, despite the pedigree of the production house (Working Title, a British company that collaborated, among other things, with the Coen brothers) and of the crew (Jack Thorne as co-writer together with the director, who comes from prestigious backgrounds like a cathode collaboration with Danny Boyle and won awards such as Best European Feature Film at the Berlinale in 2012 with his first feature), that sense of Netflix’s presence flattened everything, reducing what could have been something of epically uplifting to a feel-good homework, where everything stops dramatically as soon as you move away from the swimming sequences.
Something is charming about true stories. Because even if they take liberties with the details, what makes them so impressive is that you know this isn’t something that writers just made up. This is also the case with this film, which not only tells the story of two girls. He also talks about how dangerous the refugee journey can be. The scenes with the rubber boat on the sea are haunting. They show the fear, danger, and desperation that people feel because they think they are about to drown. The film also manages to give the viewer a feeling for what these people are putting themselves through. He relies on empathy.
Sure, not everyone is capable of that, as you can see again and again from comments on drowned refugees, but the film, which is also technically excellent, tries to let the viewer walk in these people’s shoes for two hours. The Swimmers is beautifully implemented – with images that are sometimes of immense beauty, even in the moments of greatest danger. The moment a bomb bursts through the roof and lands in the swimming pool, while one of the girls is underwater, is a good example of the visual ideas the production comes up with.
The Swimmers Review: The Last Words
The Swimmers A formidable true story underlies yet another somewhat anonymous biopic that risks sinking into the algorithmic ocean of Netflix, despite the commitment of the two actresses and the carefully shot swimming scenes.
