RebelCairo tells a moving story of nine girls who left everything behind to achieve their shared dream: becoming Olympians.
Led by head coach Anastasyia Chepak and coach Nour El Afandi, the Olympic Artistic Swimming team is the epitome of discipline, team work, persistence, dedication, and fight. This team along with their coaches had to endure countless unexpected events on their journey to become Olympic athletes and coaches. Their lifelong dream of becoming Olympians was almost taken away from them one year ago because of a global pandemic.
We sat down with Aly to talk about his experience working with the team.
Aly, tell me why you wanted to tell this team's story.
I believed people had to know what the members of this team go through on the daily. Moreover, the Olympic games were delayed one year because of COVID-19 and that was a great challenge for the team. Enduring one week of this crazy training schedule is no easy mental or physical job. This is the backstory that I wanted people to see because people only see the last step of these athletes' journey on TV and judge based on that.
How was filming like? Fill us in on the BTS.
The filming schedule was basically set around the team's training schedule. We were present from start to finish. We intentionally chose to have no strict script for the film so there were no specific shots that had to be taken after which we could leave. Any moment, something interesting could happen so I had to be there to film it. Also, filming underwater with limited equipment was intense. We couldn’t rent diving oxygen tanks so it was hard to keep up with the team underwater each day.
What surprised you the most accompanying the team closely everyday?
I was struck by their fighting spirit. I remember seeing one of the team members cry before the training session began because she was in pain. Despite that, she carried on. That, to me, was very inspiring. I was also surprised by how long their training hours were. Extremely repetitive and very physically demanding.
This project is still not over yet. Where do you see it going next?
Yes, we had to stick to the project deadline so we released the film as it is. However, I do see a lot of technical improvements happening next. I’ll be working on that in the meantime. Hopefully, then, we’ll be able to take this project to new places.
For now, our collaboration with Egypt's Olympic Synchronized Swimming team of Tokyo 2020 (+1) ends here. It has probably been our favorite story to tell so far - a project very true to the core of our brand.
You can see more of One Team Dream on our instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/rebelcairo/?hl=en
