Welsh-Egyptian director Sally El Hosaini had the opening night film at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival with “The Swimmers,” a Netflix drama about two would-be Olympic swimmers fleeing Syria for a chance to compete in Europe. She’s back at the festival a year later with “Unicorns,” codirected with James Krishna Floyd. It’s a quieter, less rousing drama that in some ways couldn’t be further from “The Swimmers,” but in other ways shares that earlier film’s determination to find moments of happiness and celebration in the midst of struggle.
“Unicorns” is a work designed to bring empathy for its two lead characters, a scruffy auto mechanic trying to raise a young son by himself and a British-Asian drag queen looking for moments of release in a life of hardship.