Sally El-Hosaini: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Cohen Media Group has acquired all North American distribution rights to Unicorns, the cross-cultural romance that debuted at Toronto 2023 and went on to play at London, Palm Springs, Sydney and other festivals.

Naman Ramachandran British actor Ben Hardy, whose credits include “X-Men: Apocalypse,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Netflix’s “Love at First Sight,” is one of the leads in upcoming film “Unicorns.” Co-directed by BAFTA nominee Sally El Hosaini (“The Swimmers”) and her long-standing collaborator James Krishna Floyd, from a script written by Floyd, the film follows a queer South Asian club performer (Jason Patel) living a double life who meets Luke, a straight, single-father mechanic, with whom unexpected sparks begin to fly. Hardy, who plays Luke in the LGBTQ+ romantic drama, was drawn to the project by the unique story and the opportunity to work with director El Hosaini. “It was a challenging role for me, something I’d never played before,” Hardy said of portraying Luke, a working-class mechanic who enters the world of “gaysian” clubs in London.

Alex Ritman Signature Entertainment has acquired the U.K. and Irish rights to “Unicorns,” the romance drama co-directed by BAFTA nominee Sally El Hosaini (“The Swimmers”) and her long-standing collaborator James Krishna Floyd, who starred in both “The Swimmers” and her directorial debut “My Brother the Devil.” From a script written by Floyd, “Unicorns” is described as a “visually daring and heartfelt portrayal of modern masculinity” and follows a queer South Asian club performer living a double life who meets a straight, single-father mechanic, with whom unexpected sparks begin to fly.

Carole Horst “Unicorns” explores a world not seen much in feature films — the world of “gaysians,” the South Asian gay community in the U.K. The film, directed by Sally El Hosaini (“The Swimmers”) and James Krishna Floyd and written by Floyd, follows Aysha/Ashiq (charismatic newcomer Jason Patel) a queer, Muslim, South Asian drag queen living a double life who sparks a friendship then romance with white, straight mechanic and single father Luke (“Eastenders’ ” Ben Hardy, equally charismatic). The film bowed to rave reviews at the Toronto Intl.

EXCLUSIVE: Bohemian Rhapsody actor Ben Hardy and newcomer Jason Patel were kept apart during the pre-production phase of Unicorns, a love story between an Essex car mechanic and a South Asian drag queen.

EXCLUSIVE: 12 Years A Slave and Brokeback Mountain outfit River Road Entertainment has joined Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd’s feature Unicorns as producer and financier.

Manori Ravindran International Editor The stars descended on Soho House in downtown Toronto on Saturday for Variety and Chanel’s Female Filmmakers’ Dinner during the Toronto International Film Festival. Guests in attendance included Tilda Swinton, star of Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter”; Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of “The Woman King”; Darren Aronofsky, director of “The Whale”; and Anna Kendrick, who’s in Toronto shopping her new AGC Studios project “The Dating Game” to market buyers. Stars mingled on a packed rooftop before convening in the club’s private dining room, which gathered around 100 of the festival’s bright lights in filmmaking. They dined on a bespoke Soho House menu of beef tartare with black truffle, black cod and bok choy, and wagyu rib cap with porcini purée.

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.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic At the end of “The Swimmers,” you could be excused for thinking that Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini won an Olympic gold medal. She didn’t. That’s not to detract from everything she and her older sister, Sara, went through to escape the Syrian civil war and reclaim their dreams of competitive swimming. It just means that director Sally El Hosaini and co-writer Jack Thorne didn’t know how else to wrap this inspirational true story, which is ideally suited for one of those 40-minute Oscar-grubbing documentary shorts but is stretched over three times that length (and then some) in this feel-good Toronto Film Fest opener. At a bloated 134 minutes, it’s not enough that co-leads (and real-life sisters) Nathalie and Manal Issa have great chemistry on-screen, or that the story reminds you of last year’s “Flee” and a dozen other true-life refugee stories. The gratuitous running time tells you something right off: There’s more than enough movie here even without the trip to the Rio Olympics, where Yusra placed 41st out of 45 in the 100-meter butterfly. But stretching it out this long is still liable to make your brain start to prune, the way fingers do when they spend too much time in water.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor The Toronto Film Festival will honor composer Hildur Guðnadóttir with the Variety Artisan Award at this year’s Tribute Awards. Along with Guðnadóttir, Welsh Egyptian filmmaker and screenwriter Sally El Hosaini will receive the TIFF Emerging Talent Award presented by MGM at the annual TIFF Tribute Awards. This awards season, Guðnadóttir composed the scores for two films, Todd Field’s “Tár” and Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking.” Guðnadóttir cemented her place in Oscar history when she became only the fourth woman to win an Academy Award for original score for “Joker.”

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.

EXCLUSIVE: Director Sally El Hosaini’s new feature Unicorns will begin principal photography in the U.K. this October, with Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray’s Maven Screen Media and Philip Herd’s Chromatic Aberration financing and producing.

“The Swimmers”, a movie about two sisters fleeing Syria, will be the opening night gala presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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.

EXCLUSIVE: We have learned that filmmaker Sally El Hosaini has signed with CAA.