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Sara Mardini, once a competitive swimmer in Syria, became Europe’s most celebrated refugee after saving 18 people’s lives. After working as a rescue volunteer in the Mediterranean, she is accused of people smuggling and faces a 25-year prison sentence. We follow her fight for justice and journey of self-discovery against the backdrop of Europe’s refugee ‘crisis’ in Long Distance Swimmer: Sara Mardini.
At 20, Sara was already famous. She fled Syria in 2015 with her younger sister Yusra. When their boat broke down as they were crossing the sea to Greece, Sara and Yusra and two others jumped into the waves and swam for three and a half hours in open water to stop their dinghy from capsizing, saving the lives of everyone on board. Their journey made headlines around the world, and is dramatized in a Netflix film called The Swimmers. Our story begins when the fictionalized drama ends. Sara has spent three years rescuing refugees on the same journey that made her famous, but she was suddenly arrested in 2018, accused by Greek authorities of running a criminal enterprise and charged with “international espionage and people smuggling”. Banned from Lesbos and waiting for news of the trial, she lives a surreal existence in Berlin.
Studying at a liberal arts college by day, escaping to techno clubs at night, she tries to reconnect with her family, while Yusra trains for the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, a dream the two sisters once shared. Shot over a period of three years, Long Distance Swimmer: Sara Mardini follows Sara’s fight for justice and journey of self-discovery, and it illustrates Europe’s biggest shift in the last decade: from being a place that welcomed refugees to an environment hostile to those who dare pull drowning people out of the sea.
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