Two sisters carry their championship swimming ambitions out of a collapsing home country and toward the world stage in The Swimmers, a 2022 biographical sports drama directed by Sally El Hosaini.
What is The Swimmers about?
As war closes in on their city in Syria, sisters Yusra and Sara Mardini face a choice that most people never have to make: stay and risk everything, or leave everything behind for an uncertain path forward. Their journey out becomes one of the most demanding tests of their lives, taking them across borders and open water where the very swimming skill that defines them is called on to save lives, not just win races. The film follows their passage as refugees alongside their continued pull toward the sport that has shaped their identity since childhood, tracing how ambition, family loyalty, and survival intertwine under pressure. Rather than treating the sisters' athletic goals and their displacement as separate stories, the film weaves them together, showing how a dream carried from a swimming pool in Damascus keeps pushing forward through refugee camps, unfamiliar cities, and the very real uncertainty of whether that dream is still reachable at all.
About the cast
Real-life sisters Manal Issa and Nathalie Issa play Yusra and Sara, bringing a natural, lived-in rapport to the central relationship, with Matthias Schweighöfer, Ali Suliman, and Kinda Alloush filling out the surrounding cast of family and coaches.
Context & significance
A Turkey-United Kingdom co-production, The Swimmers traces its story from the outbreak of conflict in Syria through to the 2016 Rio Olympics, grounding a global sporting moment in the specific, personal cost of getting there.
Watching The Swimmers on Ktime
The Swimmers is available on K-Time with a free account login, presented through a Farsi-language interface and offered with Persian dubbing and subtitles for viewers who wish to follow the story in Persian.