Sally El Hosaini

Sally El Hosaini is a British-Egyptian lesbian filmmaker, raised in Cairo, who read Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University and worked for Amnesty International and as a production coordinator before directing her debut short, The Fifth Bowl (2007), which won a BAFTA Cymru award. Her 2009 short Henna Night centered on a young woman's same-sex relationship colliding with family and cultural expectations. She is best known for the feature My Brother the Devil (2012), which won the Sundance World Cinema Jury Prize for Dramatic Film and depicted brotherhood, identity, and queerness in East London's Arab immigrant community, and The Swimmers (2022), the acclaimed true story of two Syrian sisters who competed in the 2016 Olympics after swimming to safety from Syria. El Hosaini has been openly lesbian throughout her career and has spoken about the intersection of her Egyptian heritage and her lesbian identity.