Tribeca Review: ‘Aisha’ With Letitia Wright Gets World Premiere

deadline.com:

Although set in the Republic of Ireland, this slight but surprisingly powerful film will hit a raw nerve in countries all over Europe in the wake of the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

More specifically, it will likely have an impact on the U.K. arthouse circuit, after the British government’s recent, controversial decision to launder asylum-seekers via a scheme deporting them to Rwanda for processing.Why its producers chose Tribeca as a launchpad, then, is a bit of mystery, and if it’s down to star power, any stray Marvel fans drawn by Letitia Wright’s MCU pedigree certainly won’t be in for a rollercoaster thrill-ride.That said, anyone attuned to its creative team’s integrity and the film’s careful, considered tempo will likely be sympathetic to its concerns.Wright, deceptively superb in an unshowy, understated way stars, as Aisha Osagie, a young Nigerian woman in her 20s living in a hostel in Ireland.

While waiting to be granted leave to remain, Aisha has favored status that gives her permission to work as a hairdresser’s assistant, and allows her to send money back to her mother.Things seem to take a turn for the brighter when Aisha is befriended by affable security guard Conor Healy (Josh O’Connor), who breaks company rules to spend time with Aisha and will try, in a subtly non-intrusive fashion, to find out what happened to her and her family, and why she feels her life would be in danger if she were to return to Nigeria.However, after a run-in with the hostel’s owner, Aisha is asked to leave, and is relocated to a rural caravan park, far from her workplace and her lawyer, where she must wait until her interview with the immigration authorities finally comes around.