When an administrator says “I’m sorry” at a shelter for asylum seekers in “Aisha,” the phrase has seldom sounded so galling. An exemplar of the upending energy individuals can wield in bureaucracies, the administrator repeatedly makes issues troublesome for Aisha, a younger Nigerian lady petitioning for everlasting residence in Eire.
The “Black Panther” star Letitia Wright descends from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to present a quietly fierce efficiency as Aisha, an asylum seeker within the writer-director Frank Berry’s drama. The explanations for her request unfold throughout visits together with her authorized counsel, in video talks together with her mom in Lagos and on the cautious prodding of the shelter’s fledgling safety guard (performed with hangdog sympathy by Josh O’Connor of “Challengers”). All of the whereas, Wright breathes deep vulnerability into Aisha’s unsurprising reticence.
On the magnificence salon the place she works, Aisha’s rightly cagey as she listens to her clients. However on the shelter, she turns heat, when she offers makeovers to fellow immigrants. As he did for his award-winning jail movie, “Michael Inside,” Berry used nonprofessional actors with intimate expertise of the system — right here, Eire’s Worldwide Safety Workplace, which processes asylum functions — he wished to depict. It’s a gesture that retains the movie from lapsing into melodrama.
Will Aisha persuade the choice makers that she can not safely return to Nigeria? Will Aisha and Conor’s hushed friendship bud into one thing extra? “Aisha” resists tidy solutions by way of the mild power of its performances and by staying on the rebuffs and uncertainty Aisha suffers.
Aisha
Not rated. Working time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.
