Summary
- Aisha
is a tender drama about loneliness and bureaucracy in Ireland’s immigration system, featuring stunning performances from Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor. - Critics are raving about director Frank Berry’s authentic approach, with
Aisha
holding a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. - Aisha
continues the UK social realist film scene, following in the footsteps of greats like Ken Loach.
We have a new clip from the upcoming drama, Aisha, which stars Letitia Wright (Black Panther, Small Axe) and Josh O’Connor (Challengers, God’s Own Country). You can watch the clip above. The film is a tender social realist drama about loneliness, bureaucracy, and the transcendent beauty of friendship. You can read the full synopsis below:
“Aisha charts the experiences of a young Nigerian woman as she seeks international protection in Ireland. Caught in limbo for years in Ireland’s immigration system, Aisha Osagie develops a friendship with former prisoner Conor Healy, who she meets at one of the accommodation centers. Aisha and Conor’s growing friendship soon looks to be short-lived as Aisha’s future in Ireland comes under threat.”
The film comes right on the heels of Josh O’Connor’s latest release, Luca Guadagnino’s new movie, Challengers. O’Connor has received great acclaim for that performance, and is truly having a moment. He led the beautiful art film La Chimera, and stars in the upcoming Kate Winslet drama Lee, a biography of a famous war photographer. Letitia Wright, meanwhile, has gone from the MCU to a variety of excellent indie productions, such as The Silent Twins and Surrounded, which has cemented her as one of the most exciting young actors around.
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Aisha Has a Perfect Critics Score
Following its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, the third feature by director Frank Berry (following Michael Inside and I Used to Live Here) has received much acclaim on the festival circuit. With the great Ken Loach retiring, perhaps Berry will become the next prominent social realist filmmaker in the UK. Aisha is set to hit theaters on May 10th from Samuel Goldwyn Films. With 22 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Aisha holds a perfect 100% critics score. Lisa Kennedy of The New York Times writes:
“As he did for his award-winning prison film, Michael Inside, Berry used nonprofessional actors with intimate experience of the system — here, Ireland’s International Protection Office, which processes asylum applications
—
he wanted to depict. It’s a gesture that keeps the film from lapsing into melodrama […] Aisha resists tidy answers through the gentle force of its performances and by staying on the rebuffs and uncertainty Aisha suffers.”
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Meanwhile, Michael Nordine writes for Variety:
“Writer-director Frank Berry’s drama of bureaucracy eschews histrionics in favor of a docudrama-like approach that’s all the more affecting for how authentic it feels. The result isn’t quite Kafka, but it’s closer than it should be […] The results speak for themselves: Wright delivers her most moving performance yet here, with Aisha’s sorrows reflected in her eyes and etched on her face in one scene after another.”
Aisha hits theaters on May 10, 2024, from Samuel Goldwyn Films. You can see another clip of the film below, featuring Josh O’Connor:
