CAPITAL IRISH FILM FESTIVAL 2023: ‘Aisha’ Explains Without Exploiting

It’s well-noted that Ireland’s immigration and asylum systems are abhorrent. Frank Berry’s Aisha is an attempt to depict exactly how so through the eyes of an asylum seeker, Aisha (Letitia Wright). And it does a fairly decent job at it. Aisha fled to Ireland from her home in Nigeria after her father and brother were killed and she and her mother had to run away for their own safety. But many months have already passed, and Aisha still awaits a decision on her asylum application, leaving not only her in a precarious position but, even more so, her mother in hiding still in Nigeria.

The cruelties and absurdities of the system are on display from the moment the movie begins. Simple things like getting halal food warmed up in the microwave of the housing complex Aisha’s been placed in are against arbitrary rules. Its capricious director holds her entire life in his hands, able to send her packing at any moment he feels. But Aisha eventually befriends Conor (Josh O’Connor), a nightshift security guard at the shelter who tries to help her feel like the actual human she is.

At first, Conor worried me as a character. He’s more or less designed to be the white audience’s gateway into Aisha’s world. The movie is, after all, made by a white director. I feared that he’d wind up in some kind of savior position or shift the movie’s focus onto him and his problems. But none of that ever came to pass. Rather, while he does still serve as that gateway, it’s a fully transparent and one-way portal. His life and his contributions to the movie are notable and valued, but his character still ultimately exists to serve Aisha, and never the other way around.

As the story goes on over a long stretch of months and as Aisha and Conor become closer, Conor reveals a number of truths about himself that serve to make him more empathetic on his own and help draw deeper connections between his and Aisha’s experiences. But they’re never expanded upon or are the focus of any conversation. Anything he shares, Aisha takes in and is appreciative of his honesty, but in her never asking him to elaborate, the focus is able to remain entirely on her. The same goes for their personality development.

Aisha could easily be mistaken as demur for how quiet and reserved she is. But this is all a mask, and Wright plays the switch into her characters’ truest self, in the rare few scenes that it’s revealed in, perfectly. The amount of spark that suddenly comes out of her compared to the very pensive state she’s typically in makes those quiet and thoughtful moments she’s constantly spending all the more sad. The depth of her grief and the monstrosity of her position are all the easier to grasp as a result.

Meanwhile, Conor never really has much of the same opportunity for growth. While this does service Aisha’s ability to grow as a character independently of Conor’s, it does make their budding romance a bit more challenging to accept. Anybody can be kind and understanding as well as helpful and supportive. That doesn’t make them automatically have a romantic spark. While there are a few visual cues like staring longingly at a photo or prolongingly into each others’ eyes that give away their growing feelings, the lack of opportunity to see Conor’s truest personality beyond all of his masking feels apparent. Or, perhaps his quiet and sweet temperament and being an awkward conversationalist is his truest self all along, which is more likely, and the fact that he never really grows or changes over all that time is just a little disinteresting.

Aisha does well taking a system that most everyone knows to be awful and demonstrating just how much so through the eyes of somebody going through it while never turning to either a savior figure or an exploitation of her life to do so. It’s not a hopeless movie, but it’s far from a hopeful one, either. It just is trying to show what the asylum process is like for somebody going through it—something it does quite well and quite thoughtfully.

Aisha screened as part of the Capital Irish Film Festival 2023. Follow all of our coverage here.