😍 2022-11-29 17:55:00 – Paris/France.
The situation did not give any more for more. Since 2011, the date of the start of the civil war in Syria, the bombed houses and buildings have gradually become part of the landscape. The presence of the army was something as common as it was aggressive, and death was becoming too close an issue.
More Things got complicated for the Mardinis when a projectile landed right in the gymnasium where the family was supporting Yusra, the second daughter who was then taking part in a swimming competition. Yusra and Sarah, her older sister, had been swimming since they were little. Her father was her coach and dreamed of young women planning an Olympic career. A wish that has become practically impossible to achieve in his native country.
The Swimmers (Netflix)
To their great regret, the parents could no longer deny their daughters' wish: to leave Syria at all costs, as most of their friends who were still alive were doing. Thus, armed with light luggage and the money that their father obtained thanks to a loan, the young women leave for Germany, hardly imagining all that they will have to live from now on.
This journey full of desires and hopes gives life to swimmers (2022), a film directed by filmmaker Sally El Hosaini, which has remained at the top of the most played films on Netflix these days. The feature film not only shows the reality of thousands of people forced to emigrate from their country, but also bases its argument on the true story of the Mardini sisters.
In the words of El Hosaini, excluding some fictional elements included to cover the reality of other refugees, the story is carefully tied to what the young women experienced. A result that was possible thanks to the work hand in hand with the family and an in-depth research on the conditions in which migrants from the Middle East settle on European shores.
“Yusra and Sara were involved in the making of the film from the start. Much research has been done with his family. We have mostly stuck to the truth, but there have been times where fiction has been made, but always to allow us to honor the larger story of the refugees rather than just Yusra and Sara's story. As inspiring as Yusra and Sara's story is, they are the 1%, and we also wanted to represent the 99% of refugees who don't have that happy ending or outcome.“commented the director in an interview with Forbes magazine. “Nobody wants to make a fake movie, and authenticity was the most important thing for me to solve this problem. I compiled my own research and everyone on the team knew how important authenticity was, and we kept it at the highest level.
Among the challenges the team took on was recreating the route of those crossing from Turkey to the island of Lesvos, Greece. " Hassan Akkad, our associate producer and also our consultant, made the trip himself. We used his cell phone footage and the cell phone footage of other people who had been on the trip. In fact, we cast a lot of refugees in the film who had made the same trip, and there were refugees working on the film behind the scenes. It all helped to make sure we were telling the story the right way,” El Hosaini said.
They also chose to employ young translators who could adapt the script from English to Arabic as faithfully as possible. In the film, the Mardini sisters are played by Manal and Nathalie Issa, also sisters, a detail which for the director added chemistry and verisimilitude to the projection of Sarah and Yusra's relationship on screen.
The Swimmers (Netflix)
The story of the Mardini sisters became public in 2016, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the creation of a new delegation that would allow athletes with refugee status to participate in the Rio Olympics.. Although the initiative was well received, the places for the athletes who would participate in the games under the wing of the IOC were limited.
The agency published the list of those selected in March of the same year, and among the ten selected was the name of Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini. as seen in swimmers, Yusra and her sister Sarah started this sport from an early age. Her father, a swimming coach, started grooming her when she was just three years old. Thus began a passion that accompanies him to this day.
Yousra Mardini. Photo by Alexander Hassenstein (Getty Images for the International Olympic Committee)
Far from being a simple hobby, Yusra began her career as a top athlete representing Syria on the national team, under the wing of her country's Olympic Committee. From an early age, he started adding medals and even competed in a swimming world championship before migrating.
But things changed with the start of the war. “Suddenly you couldn't go where you wanted to go, or your mother would call you when you were on the way to tell you: 'Come back; there is something going on there,'” commented the young woman during a conversation with the New York Times. In the same interview, he said that his family home was destroyed in the Daraya massacre, one of the most violent attacks in the early years of the war that left hundreds of civilians dead.
Along the way, two of his fellow swimmers died. In 2015, she and her parents realized that the situation had become untenable. A) Yes, On August 12, 2015, the young woman was traveling with her sister Sarah and two cousins with the aim of reaching Germany.
Yousra Madrini. Photograph by Gordon Welters (The New York Times)
They first moved from Damascus, the Syrian capital, to Istanbul. There they contacted smugglers, with the aim of reaching European shores. They thus headed to Izmir, Turkey, where they were left in a forest near the coast to board a boat for the Greek island of Lesbos. In total, the group was made up of about thirty future refugees.
When their turn came, the Mardini sisters had to board a small boat with 18 other people, where a 6-year-old boy was.. After they had been sailing for about 20 minutes, the boat's engine failed. Of the 20 people upstairs, only four could swim. The sun had already set and the tide was getting stronger and stronger.
“Everyone was praying. We were calling the Turkish police, the Greek police, saying, 'Please help us. We have children! We are drowning!' And they kept saying, 'Turn around and come back. Turn around and come back,'” the athlete recalled to American media. With no other options, the sisters decided to jump into the sea and swim for over three hours to land the boat.
Yousra Madrini. Photograph by Gordon Welters (The New York Times)
At that moment, Yusra confesses to having thought: “Am I a swimmer and in the end I will die in the water? Fortunately, they managed to reach the coast of the island alive. But there they would start a series of pilgrimages and journeys in smuggled vehicles through Greece, Serbia, Hungary and Austria, until finally arriving in Germany.
His first memories of the German country are the long queues at the refugee registration point and the endless procedures, with a climate of constant temperatures below zero. Little by little, the need to continue his maritime training resurfaced.
Thanks to the refugee camp, the young woman found Wasserfreunde Spandau, a swimming center built for the 1936 Olympics organized by Nazi Germany. There he began to resume his routine under the tutelage of trainer Sven Spannekrebs, to make up for two years without sporting activity. The initial goal was to qualify for the Tokyo 2022 Olympics.
Yousra Madrini. Photograph by Gordon Welters (The New York Times)
Soon rumors began to circulate about the delegation of refugees for the Rio 2016 games. It was then that Yusra and Spannekrebs decided to intensify the routine to obtain the necessary marks so that the young woman could participate in the edition which was then to be held. Mardini managed to excel and compete in Rio, in the 100 meter freestyle and 100 meter butterfly.
Although Yusra was also constantly busy making the refugee situation visible, it was Sarah who most strongly followed the path of activism.. After all that she has been through with her sister, the young woman has decided to settle again on the island of Lesbos, with the aim of providing humanitarian aid to people who have arrived on the continent by sea, such as she had done it a few years ago.
Yusra and Sarah Mardini (Getty Images)
In 2018, Sarah was arrested along with 23 other activists from the NGO ERCI (Emergency Response Center International, for its acronym), accused of human trafficking, espionage and money laundering by the Greek government led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis.. According to the act, the volunteers' work hid an alleged network of migrant smugglers, responsible for facilitating the entry of hundreds of people into Greece between 2016 and 2018.
However, various human rights organizations pointed out that the measure was part of an ongoing persecution by various European governments against aid organizations. Specifically, Amnesty International pointed out that the action taken against Mardini was an attempt to penalize solidarity with refugees and migrants.
“Up to 25 years in prison, they could be sentenced. It was the last thing that came to mind when they were carrying out their mission on the Greek island: to spot the boats in danger and help the people who were there so that they did not drown,” reads a petition published on the Amnesty International website. for the freedom of Sarah Mardini and Seán Biden, who spent almost 100 days in prison. After various protests and campaigns, in November 2021 the trial was postponed until further notice.
Sarah Mardini and Seán Biden (photo by Amnesty International)
SOURCE: Reviews News
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