LOS ANGELES: After sharing her story with the world in the BAFTA-nominated Netflix documentary “The Swimmers,” Syrian Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini is turning her focus to her non-profit work, as well as other endeavours.
Having competed in the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics as part of the Refugee Olympic Athletes Team, Yusra is turning her focus to developing a foundation to facilitate education and sports opportunities for refugees, she said in an interview with Arab News. The sporting star is also starting her own journey as a filmmaker.
“I am also studying in a university here in California called University of Southern California and I am studying film and production,” she said. “I am doing a lot of activities in the fashion domain and I have a non-profit organization and I am doing something with the UNHCR and I am also studying, so generally I am happy with my life.”
Yursra and her sister Sarah’s journey from Syrian war refugees swimming for three hours to the Greek island of Lesbos to Olympic athletes has been chronicled in the BAFTA-nominated film “The Swimmers.”
During the interview, Yusra revealed whether everything portrayed in the film is true.
“I’ll say that 90 percent of what happens in the movie is real,” she said. “There are things that might not be real in the sense that it did not happen to me, but it happened to other refugees and that was the important thing, that even if something didn’t happen to me, it did happen to many refugees in the world.”
During auditions, Yusra said a lot of Syrian girls sent her direct messages on social media telling her that they applied for her role.
“Manal (Issa) applied for the role and she got Sarah’s role and then she told the director that she has a younger sister and then they auditioned together and Sally, the director, loved them a lot,” Yusra said.
While the COVID-19 protocols during filming prevented Yusra from being on set, she stayed in regular communication with Welsh Egyptian filmmaker Sally El-Hosaini and British writer Jack Thorne who she trusted to guide Lebanese actress sisters Nathalie and Manal in portraying her and Sarah’s story.
The film premiered on Netflix on Nov. 23 and screened at the 47th annual Toronto Film Festival in September.
