Manal Issa Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor South Korean director Hong Sang-soo was awarded the El Gouna Gold Star for best narrative film for his meditation on art and relationships, “In Our Day,” as the delayed edition of the El Gouna Film Festival held its closing ceremony on Thursday. The Italian animated film “A Greyhound of a Girl,” directed by Enzo D’Alò, and the Brazilian director Guto Parente’s “A Strange Path” picked up the Silver and Bronze Stars respectively.

You often hear that reality is often more amazing than any fiction. That’s exactly the case with the story that inspired the upcoming film, “The Swimmers.” As seen in the trailer for “The Swimmers,” the film follows the incredible true story of two sisters who escaped Syria as refugees with dreams of one day competing in the Olympic Games as swimmers.

Manal Issa and Nathalie Issa, real life sisters who play a pair of Olympic swimming hopefuls, also sisters, said they weren’t at all aquatic when cast in the Sally El Hosaini film ‘The Swimmers’ that opened TIFF last night.

“The Swimmers” is inspired by the true story of teenage Olympic athlete and Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini who, in 2015, along with her sister Sara and two others, dragged a boat full of fellow refugees across the Aegean sea. After the girls made it to Germany, Yusra was selected along with ten others to compete with the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

It’s a tale almost too astonishing to believe: two sisters flee their war-torn country and save sixteen other people’s lives through their champion swimming skills. But it’s the true story of Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini and her sister Sara and the basis for “The Swimmers,” set for its world premiere as the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival this month.

Making its European premiere, Sally El Hosaini’s The Swimmers has been set as the opening film of the 18th Zurich Film Festival. Based on the inspirational true-life story of the Mardini sisters, it will screen on September 22 at Zurich’s Convention Center. It will earlier world premiere as the opening night gala presentation in Toronto.

Sally El Hosaini’s Netflix movie The Swimmers will be making its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival as the opening-night film on September 8 at Roy Thomson Hall.

Naman Ramachandran Sally El Hosaini’s refugee drama “The Swimmers” will open the 47th Toronto International Film Festival.The film follows the journey made by swimming sisters Yusra and Sarah Mardini who fled as refugees from war-torn Syria all the way to the 2016 Rio Olympics.In 2015, after their house was destroyed in the Syrian Civil War, the Mardini sisters decided to flee the country. They made their way to Lebanon and then Turkey, where they arranged to be smuggled into Greece by dinghy.