‘The Swimmers’ Stars Manal & Nathalie Issa Said They Couldn’t Swim When They Were Cast – Toronto
deadline.comManal 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.“Manal and Natalie couldn’t swim when they took the roles,” El Hosaini said at a press conference Friday live streamed on Twitter.“I was like, ‘forget about it’.
I wasn’t going to swim. Let me finish my studies,” said Nathalie. “It was really hard at first. But once you know how to float, it’s really nice, and once you have a goal you want to reach it.
It’s how you feel when you are in the water, and how you feel when you want to achieve something” — similar to her character.Nathalie and Manal play Yusra and Sara Mardini, teenage sisters trying to live as normally as possible in war-torn Syria, they eventually flee as Russian bombs fly – one exploding in their pool.
They finally flee to Istanbul via Beirut on tourist visas, followed by a harrowing ocean crossing to the shores of Lesbos, and ultimately passage to Berlin.
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