Bristol actor stars in new Netflix film The Swimmers

Elmi Rashid Elmi has been professionally acting for two years

A Bristol actor is one of the stars in a new Netflix film about two sisters who escaped the war in Syria to follow their Olympic dreams.

Elmi Rashid Elmi, who grew up in Easton, is one of the supporting lead actors and plays a refugee named Bilal.

Based on a true story, the film has been been praised by critics and was fourth in Netflix's top 10 UK Films this week.

Mr Elmi said he is very passionate about sharing refugee stories.

"This is the type of work I got into acting for - to be a voice for the people that don't necessarily have one."

The film was shot in the UK, Turkey, Belgium and Germany

The Swimmers tells the true story of sisters 17-year-old Yusra and 20-year-old Sara Mardini who fled war-torn Syria in 2015.

The sisters swim through the bitter waves of the Aegean sea whilst saving the lives of 18 asylum seekers on an overcrowded dinghy.

After a 25-day journey, the sisters arrive in Berlin where they become refugees.

Yusra joins a local swimming club and trains to join the first-ever refugee team at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Actors Ahmed Malek and Elmi Elmi pictured at the Swimmers Premiere

Mr Elmi said he was "over the moon" to be cast as Bilal and said he already felt connected to the story, due to having close family members who had made similar journeys.

His father arrived in England from the Horn of Africa in 1992.

"He came from a family of farmers, just between the border of Somaliland and Ethiopia," Mr Elmi said.

"He wanted a better life for his family and himself and to find something new.

"For the first time I could kind of experience all the stories my father used to tell me about."

Mr Elmi said "the cast were amazing" and "we clicked from the beginning"

For Mr Elmi, the hardest part of working on the film was shooting in the sea, and he described how the cast spent roughly 10 days filming the boat journey scene.

"It was real, it was choppy. We had lots of safety precautions, but it still felt very real."

He said it was all worth it to be a voice for the people who have not been heard before.

"It's easy to judge people when you don't know the full scope, especially for us in the Western world.

"When you see that these people are just like you and they had homes, ambitions and things that they loved but they had to leave it behind, you start to sympathise a bit more."

Mr Elmi's next film appearance will be in Matar, directed by BAFTA-winner Hassan Akkad.