Sally El Hosaini: “I’ve always felt like being mixed was my superpower”
The film producer on seeing dissonance, never feeling like you belong and an incessant awareness of difference
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to producer Sally El Hosaini, who is of Welsh and Egyptian heritage. Her latest film, The Swimmers, is out now on Netflix and follows the true story of Yusra and Sara Mardini. The sisters fled Syria for Germany, with Yusra eventually making the first ever refugee team at the Rio Olympics. For Sally, the story struck a chord of feeling out of place. Read on for her story, below.
How do you define your heritage?
My dad was Egyptian, my mum Welsh. I like to be specific, so I always say Welsh-Egyptian or Egyptian-Welsh. My parents met in Liverpool, where my mum was training as a teacher and my father had gone to do his PHD in civil engineering on an exchange programme.
After they got married, my dad decided he didn’t want to live in the UK and be a foreigner. They moved to Egypt in the ‘60s, but my mum came back to give birth in the UK so we’d have British passports as well as Egyptian ones.
I grew up in Cairo, but I came to the UK when I was 16 and only then did I have to fill in forms. I realised I didn’t know which box to tick – I was so confused. They had ‘white and African’, ‘white and Asian’ and then ‘white mixed’, but I was like, “where does half-white and half-Arab go?”
What was it like connecting to your Welsh culture while growing up in Cairo?
Even though I grew up in Egypt, our spoken language was English and I went to an English speaking school. We always had the BBC World Service playing on the radio in our house, so I felt like I was aware of news, culture, music and things as a result of that. We had a VHS player and we used to get my mum’s family to send tapes of kids TV over for us. When I went to Wales, I wasn’t a complete outsider.
I suppose the biggest thing is that you never feel like you completely belong anywhere. Even in Egypt amongst my Egyptian family, I was different because I didn’t fully belong. My Arabic is fine for general conversation, but I couldn’t have an in-depth political discussion.
Is being mixed something that you spoke about with your family?
No, not at all. I didn’t necessarily want to because it’s just different hats you wear. You know how to be in different worlds. I think it does give you empathy to lots of different sides of an argument.
I see a direct correlation with what I do now as a job and being mixed because it allows you to see things from multiple perspectives at all times. You see where there’s connection and also where there’s dissonance. When things aren’t harmonious, you’re aware of why they’re like that. Sometimes you feel like you’re the bridge between those things, or you can take a diplomatic role being the navigator.
I started my career in Middle Eastern documentaries made for British channels by British production teams. I was the in-between person and my job was to talk to both local and British teams to make everyone understand each other’s intentions. So even the way I got started in this industry was as that bridge, using my mixed heritage and perspective.
You’ve most recently produced Netflix’s The Swimmers. Despite not being a refugee, did you bring elements of your own life into that story?
Definitely. One of the main reasons I wanted to do the film was because I came to the UK at 16 to go to an amazing school called United World Colleges. It’s all about learning about different people and perspectives, and humanising each other’s cultures.
That experience of taking a journey away from my own family at that age and deciding what I wanted my life to be about was something I really related to in Yusra and Sara’s story, who the film is based on. They became the heroes they did because they had the freedom to make decisions about their lives. Ironically, if the Syrian war hadn’t broken out, would they be who they are today? Would they have taken that journey? Would they have gotten to the Olympics? Maybe they would, but in a different way.
The patriarchal, cultural and religious structures that can constrain a woman in that part of the world are shaken during war. You’d never be allowed the freedom at 17 and 20 to take that journey and make decisions about your own life. So there’s an ironic empowerment in the movie that is hopeful to me.
Do you think there’s a stereotype of what it means to be mixed?
There is. That’s the thing about stereotypes isn’t it, it’s not that they’re untrue, but they’re an incomplete picture. The more we can complete that picture, the more we can show other angles and sides, the better.
As a mixed person, I’d say that because I see all the sides incessantly, there’s a reason I’m drawn to underdog or outsider stories. There's a reason I'm drawn to subject matters where things aren't black and white, they're a bit complex and shades of grey, a bit nuanced. There's a reason why I'm always looking to subvert expectations and flip the script. That's all over my work and it's probably in my DNA because of being mixed and the perspective that’s given me on the world.
We often speak about the negatives of being mixed, but is one of the best things for you?
It’s made me who I am as a human being and as a filmmaker. I've not experienced too much negativity with being mixed – I’ve always felt okay with it. I suppose I’m in a privileged position because that’s not the case for everyone. I’ve always felt like it was my superpower rather than it being a negative thing.
That’s probably because I grew up in Egypt and lived in that part of the world. I’ve had big periods of my life where I've lived in London, the UK and Wales. Because I’ve had the real experience of both, it’s given me a grounded understanding. I can imagine if I was more in one than the other, I might be confused or be unsure of myself, wanting to know more of the unfamiliar side. I feel like I’m a tree that’s grown with roots from both sides.
Can you sum up your mixed experience in a word?
I just came back from the Cairo Film festival, so maybe that’s why I’m saying koshari. It’s a dish and it means a mix. It’s got lentils, pasta, tomato sauce, fried onions, garlic vinegar, hot sauce… you mix it all up in a jumble and eat it. It’s delicious.
The Swimmers is out now on Netflix. Next week I’ll be talking to actress Shazia Nicholls. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday.
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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.