8/11/2023 0 Comments Yep girls you saw liveYusra returned to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics last year she qualified for team Syria but still chose to be on the refugee team, and she is currently studying film and television production in California. Growing up, the Mardini sisters say they were so attached at the hip that they were more like twins, but now they are on different paths and even continents. She is also redeemed by the idea that people will see that her half of the story is equally valid and fearless, after years of being defined as Yusra’s sister-due to the Olympian’s high profile after she won the opening heat of the 100m butterfly with a time of 1 minute and 9.21 seconds in 2016. “They’re the last ones to be checked or to be taken care of” but they are often vilified in the media, she says. Meanwhile, Sara hopes people realize that single male refugees, much like their cousin Nizar, have it “10 times harder” than women or children. She also hopes the film counters the misconception that people flee their country because they want to enjoy the resources of their host nation: “It’s not a luxurious life, you have to fill out so much paperwork, some people fall into depression, some are not accepted by their host societies-they have to leave behind everything they know.” She wants viewers to remember that small acts of kindness toward desperate people go a long way. Sara says there were as many as 30 people in Turkey waiting to cross the waters and they became a “big family,” adding that they slept on a rotation system to keep each other safe.Īfter witnessing people’s shock when she doesn’t fit their stereotype of a downtrodden refugee, Yusra wants to challenge the idea that refugee identity is a monolith. Read More: Finding Home: A Year in the Life of Syrian Refugeesīut one joyful aspect of being a refugee was belonging to a diverse community that looked out for one another. The sisters also experienced a lot of anti-migrant prejudice and discrimination in Europe and initially struggled to embrace the term “refugee”: “People were treating you as if you have some kind of disease, like you’re not human,” says Sara. Yusra recalls that her mind was also blank when they were trying to stabilize the boat because she was too focused on surviving to think about anything else. “I was scared to die, but I felt like someone had to do it to make the boat lighter,” she recalls. Recalling the most taxing part of their journey, when they swam in the Aegean Sea for over three hours, Sara says she thought of absolutely nothing. “Then it was by foot, we walked, used buses, taxis, whatever we could use,” says Yusra. It took Yusra and Sara 25 days to get from Syria to Germany, with the first portion of their trip taking place via flights then by boat to Greece. There, a confident Yusra barges into a local swimming club, boasting her times, and gains sponsorship by coach Sven, who trains her to join the first-ever refugee team at the 2016 Rio Olympics. After a treacherous journey involving social stigma from disapproving European citizens and corrupt smugglers, the trio arrive in Berlin where they become refugees. Their plan is to apply for family reunification, which would allow the rest of their family to join them, before Yusra turns 18. Before this, the sisters participated in swim lessons with coaching from their father, partied with friends, and spent time with their parents, younger sister, and bird Lulu (a stand-in for their real-life cat.)Īs the effects of war become harder to avoid, Sara convinces her family that she and Yusra, along with their cousin Nizar (Ahmed Malek), should embark on a journey to Germany, where some of their friends have fled to. What began as peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 escalated into a full-scale war when the government met dissidents with deadly force. The film follows 17-year-old Yusra and 20-year-old Sara (played by Nathalie and Manal Issa, respectively) in their simple life in Daraya, Damascus, before it was disrupted by the escalation of Syria’s civil war.
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