- Overview
Aisha, a young Nigerian woman seeking asylum in Ireland, is floundering in a maze of social services and bureaucracy. As her situation becomes increasingly dire, Aisha struggles to maintain hope and dignity against the looming threat of deportation.
- Release Date
17 November 2022
- DirectingFrank Berry
- Budget
$0.00
- Revenue
$0.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moreCinemaSerf
03 December 2022
"Aisha" (Letitia Wright) has been seeking asylum in Ireland for some while when she encounters and builds a friendship with the security guard at her hostel. He, "Conor" (John O'Connor) has a bit of baggage of his own, and the two find a certain comfort in supporting each other as she is moved to a rural caravan park where she must continue her quest for residency. There's no doubt that both Wright and O'Connor deliver decent efforts here, but somehow the underlying story left me rather underwhelmed. Why Ireland? Is it just the most porous part of the EU? There is little context given as to that choice, and so when her struggles against the bureaucracy become more difficult, I felt that whilst I empathised with her predicament, I couldn't quite see why this was an Irish problem? The presentation of her as an asylum seeker is largely predicated on the skills of Wright as an engaging actor, rather than of any depth to her characterisation that could enable a neutral to make the judgements the film is clearly steering us to make. It all has a certain degree of entitlement to it, and the writer and director needed to work much harder to present the audience with a legitimacy to the story, not just to rely on an assumption that the innate kindness and sympathy we ought to feel would be forthcoming. This needed much more development and balance - those doing immigration management jobs portrayed here are usually shown as uncaring and unfeeling in an almost lazy fashion - and that compromises the whole integrity of the story. The complexities of this scenario are over-simplified here, and I think an opportunity to raise awareness of this - on both sides - has been largely missed.
More Like This
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
The infamous story of Benjamin Barker, a.k.a Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop down in London which is the basis for a sinister partnership...
See more
Veronika Decides to Die
After a frantic suicide attempt, Veronika awakens inside a mysterious mental asylum. Under the supervision of an unorthodox psychiatrist who...
See more
National Theatre Live: The Boy With Two Hearts
When a young mother speaks out against the Taliban, she and her husband are forced to flee their home and country with their three sons. Embarking...
See more
Blindness
When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions...
See more
Crypsis
After fleeing for his life, a gay refugee files for asylum in Scotland. Lacking evidence, he decides to photograph himself in the dark techno world...
See more
The Purgation
Ever since she was a little girl, Iris has wanted to be a filmmaker. For the last five years though, she's been trapped working in reality...
See more
King of Hearts
An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI to investigate a garbled report from the...
See more
True True Lie
After 12 years in an asylum, as she is reunited with friends and family, Dana begins to realize the events that led to her stay there may not have...
See more
Quills
A nobleman with a literary flair, the Marquis de Sade lives in a madhouse where a beautiful laundry maid smuggles his erotic stories to a printer...
See more
Patham Nilayile Theevandi
Sankara Narayanan always hears incessant voices in his head and he gets admitted in a mental asylum. A doctor tries to reunite him with his family...
See more
Spider
A mentally disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays...
See more
The Ruling Class
When the Earl of Gurney dies in a cross-dressing accident, his schizophrenic son, Jack, inherits the Gurney estate. Jack is not the average...
See more
Splendor in the Grass
A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and...
See more
Last Resort
Tanya leaves Moscow with her street-wise 10-year-old son Artiom to meet her English fiancée in London. But after he fails to turn up at the airport...
See more
Strait-Jacket
After a twenty-year stay at an asylum for a double murder, a mother returns to her estranged daughter where suspicions arise about her behavior.
See more
High Wall
Steven Kenet, suffering from a recurring brain injury, appears to have strangled his wife. Having confessed, he's committed to an understaffed...
See more
Bell from Hell
When John is released from a psychiatric center where he has been hospitalized for a long time, he decides to move into the house of his dead...
See more
Alter Ego
A film about the great Komitas, one of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, who wasn't killed, but went crazy and kept silence for 20 years
See more
Family Life
A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to...
See more
Killer by Nature
The troubled teenager Owen Whitmore has a sleep disorder and occasionally sleepwalks. Owen is having therapy sessions with Dr. Katherine Ramos...
See more