Sundance Review: Adura Onashile’s Tender Mother And Daughter Story ‘Girl’
deadline.comPremiering in the World Dramatic Competition, Adura Onashile’s debut feature Girl takes place in Glasgow, Scotland, but, given its themes of identity and belonging, this tender story of a refugee mother and daughter might as well be happening anywhere.
Though the production values are exceptional for a low-budget British movie, there is also the sense that, by leaning into her restrictions, Onashile has found an interesting way to tell her story, taking us into the claustrophobic, fishbowl lives of these two loners so that it is the outside world that seems strange and ‘other’ to us whenever we are faced with it.
The mother, Grace (Déborah Lukumuena), is in her mid-’20s, and she is devoted to her 11-year-old daughter Ama (Le’Shantey Bonsu).
Their backstory is never fully explained, just that the two only have each other and don’t wish for anything else other than some sort of posh domestic idyll for them to live in together, complete with carpets “soft and white, like clouds”.
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