Sara Mardini and her younger sister Yusra became Europe’s most celebrated refugee athletes when in 2016, they helped save the lives of 18 refugees crossing on a sinking dinghy from Turkey to Greece. But three years later, Sara is arrested for conducting search and rescue operations on the Greek island of Lesvos and accused of being a criminal mastermind. While her sister swims in the Olympics, Sara waits for a trial with no end in sight and a possible 20-year prison sentence.

Long Distance Swimmer: Sara Mardini follows 23-year-old Sara at a critical point in her life. An athlete who can no longer compete, a fighter caught in the metaphorical cage of a looming trial and the burden of others’ expectations, a survivor who always looks forward, not back. But her past is catching up with her.

The Mardini sisters were Syria’s elite swimmers and the nation’s hope for Olympic glory. But when civil war breaks out, their lives are upended, and they join the millions fleeing to Europe. While crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece, the engine of their overcrowded dinghy fails, and Sara and Yusra jump into the water, keeping the boat on course until they – and 18 other refugees – reach the safety of Lesvos Island.

Their story makes headlines around the world when Yusra joins the world’s first Refugee Olympic Team at the Rio Games in 2016, fulfilling a childhood dream they once shared. Later that year the sisters receive the Bambi Unsung Heroes Award and are celebrated by a Europe that stands with refugees. Their story is dramatized in a Netflix film called The Swimmers.

This documentary begins when the fictionalised drama ends. Unable to continue swimming, Sara returns to Lesvos as a search and rescue volunteer, helping other refugees brave the journey she once did. But the tides start to turn and in 2018 Sara’s humanitarian work ends abruptly when she is arrested and charged with several serious crimes, including human smuggling, money laundering and espionage. After more than three months in a high-security prison in Greece, she is released on bail and waits for a trial. If found guilty, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

Banned from Lesvos and waiting for news of the trial, she lives a surreal existence in Berlin. A student in a liberal arts college by day, escaping to techno clubs by night, and attempting to reconnect with her family after years apart. All this while her sister Yusra prepares for the Tokyo 2021 Olympics.

Shot over four years, the film follows Sara’s fight for freedom and illustrates Europe’s biggest shift of the last decade: from welcoming refugees to creating a hostile environment for those who dare to pull drowning people out of the water.