Throughout history, Ireland has been one of the countries known for emigration. Countless Irish people throughout history, due to famine, war, poverty or other not very happy circumstances, left their native country and moved mainly to America, and now that same Ireland has become a country of immigration. A country where people from all over the world try to find happiness, and in this realistic and poignant drama by Frank Berry (a very good previous film, Michael Inside), we see that it doesn’t come so easily. At least not for everyone, as we see in the example of asylum seeker from Nigeria Aisha Osagie (Letitia Wright), who is trying to fight for permanent residence in Ireland.
She fled Nigeria after guys who owed money to her father came to her village one night. The old man got into debt so that Aisha could study, he could not repay the debt on time, and as punishment both he and Aisha’s brother were killed by Nigerian usurers. Aisha and her mother managed to escape to Lagos, Aisha paid smugglers who took her to Ireland where she applied for asylum, and while waiting for approval, she works as a beautician. However, until she receives asylum, she lives in a shelter for asylum seekers that looks something between a prison and a student dormitory. The employees behave quite harshly and contemptuously towards users, they often mistreat them, without even trying to understand their position.
And regardless of whether they are for or against immigration, usually these are tragic fates, people who have experienced unimaginable traumas, and in this problematic and realistic drama we see how they are squeezed by a rigid bureaucratic system that is not too bothered by their problems. Aisha does not want to talk about the tragedies and traumas she experienced in Nigeria, but over time she will get closer to the security guard at the asylum center, Conor (Josh O’Connor), who also had serious life problems and was in prison for some time. As much as the system is cruel to Aisha and people like her, the relationship between her and Conor will be tender, warm, regardless of the fact that this young Nigerian woman is unable to open up and talk about the traumas she has experienced and which no one can understand.
It’s a bit shocking that all the lawyers and activists who help her get asylum suggest that she talk as vividly and “juicily” as possible about what happened to her in Nigeria, assuming from experience that this will help her with a positive outcome for asylum. However, the viewer realizes that even remembering all this creates trauma for Aisha and that she wants to start over in a new country where her life is not threatened and where she does not have to fear that someone will break into her apartment in the middle of the night and kill her. It is a film that deals with the topic of asylum seekers in an empathetic, humanistic way, and Berry wrote the script for “Aisha” based on a real case that ended up on the table of the Irish Ministry of Justice.