Director of Netflix’s Swimmers Preparation feature on Jim Jones

Marrakech — Director Sally El Husseiny, whose remake of The Bathers opened the Toronto Film Festival, is turning her attention to one of the biggest stories of mass murder and suicide in history with her highly anticipated project The Joneses.

The Welsh-Egyptian director, who recently signed with CAA, told Variety at the Marrakech Film Festival that she began work on the film before she did her current feature film, The Bathers, but is now restarting the project toward production. The Bathers is shown at the Marrakech International Film Festival (November 11-19, 2022) this week.

Al-Husseini sheds new light on a story that she said was misunderstood. She said she had obtained the rights to life from Jim Jones’ surviving son, Stephan Jones.

“It’s a misunderstood chapter in American history,” she says. People describe Jim Jones as a kind of Charles Manson character from that era, but if history stopped in 1976/7, (before the mass murder-suicide in 1978, he would be remembered as Martin Luther King Jr. in that he was anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ, And very progressive, and unusual.

So many educated, intelligent, and progressive people signed up for People’s Temple, and then it all went wrong. It’s a movie about narcissism, fake news, if you’re fed just one narrative, what can power do to you, the power to corrupt. It is, after all, a Shakespearean family drama.”

The writer and director has received a few writing grants, including one from the San Francisco area. “It is the story of the Gulf region because they are where they came from and where many survivors still live,” she said.

The film was developed with the help of Sundance FilmTwo and a San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation grant.

Al-Hussaini is currently editing an independent film, Unicorns, which she co-directed with actor James Krishna Floyd. He makes his directorial debut with the project. Floyd also wrote the script.

“It is the love story of a straight Essex single father, played by Ben Hardy, who falls in love with a closeted British Indian queen.”

Trudie Styler and Maven Screen Media’s Celine Rattray and Philip Herd’s Chromatic Aberration were funded and produced.

Meanwhile, “The Bathers” tells the story of two swimmers, Sarah and Yusra Mardini, who left Syria as refugees, on a perilous journey, which involves towing a boatload of refugees across the Mediterranean for three hours. Yusra Mardini competed on the Refugee Olympic Team (ROT) at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

bathers
Laura Radford/Netflix

Mardini’s story went global after the Games, and in 2017 she was appointed as the youngest UNHCR (UNHCR) Goodwill Ambassador. In 2018, she released a book, Butterfly: From Refugee to Olympian, My Story of Rescue, Hope, and Triumph.

Working title produced for Netflix. Al-Husayni also wrote “The Bathers” and co-wrote Jack Thorne (“Help”).

Al-Husseini said: “When I was first asked to do this, I thought: ‘Oh no. What would it be like? It’s a bit of a reaction to the headlines, but as soon as I read the script and went to Google on the sisters, I said I had to do it.”

Al-Husayni grew up in Egypt. “I could really relate to them. They are young, free-spirited Arab women. They reminded me of my friends growing up, even though it was Cairo in the ’90s for me and Damascus, more recently for them.”

The film highlights the plight of women and refugees in different ways.

“To be a swimmer, in this part of the world, your family has to be okay with wearing a swimsuit,” she said. “My three brothers were swimmers. I spent a lot of time at swim meetings. That’s what you want to do in hot countries. They reminded me of my friends.”

It is also a story of female empowerment. She added, “She sent me a lot of scripts and scripts about young Arab women, but they all have a story of victimhood.” “It’s kind of heavy killing or honor killing or goodness knows what a painful story, but I saw in this sports movie listing the potential for them to be winners. I didn’t see that — a young brown Arab woman, a refugee win and be happy.”

War changes everything.

“There’s also this hidden story that I found empowering,” she added. “The war turns everything upside down. There is no way they could have been allowed to take this journey on their own, making decisions about their lives, which led to Yousra getting to the Olympics, becoming a champion as well, and deciding to come back to help the people of Lesbos. “If they don’t have freedom. Because all the religious and patriarchal structures in that society that encourage women to marry and have children quickly, have been destroyed and collapsed. I found it really empowering, a true story of women’s empowerment, about following your dreams.”

She hopes the film will give audiences a different view of the refugee crisis.

“I think what the British government is saying and doing is disgusting,” she said. “I hope the film allows the audience to empathize, to put a human face in this crisis, because people become detached from seeing the news. It becomes a number. More empathy is needed to understand that these are people. Migration has been happening for centuries. We all need to know that we are part of The story, and it could be me. There must be safe passage for everyone.”

In addition to CAA, Al-Husseini represents longtime agent Matthew Bates at Sale Screen, and anonymous content.



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