This Week's Movie is AISHA

Film@BirrTheatre is back for its 2023 season, bringing you the best of Irish, world and independent cinema on the theatre’s big screen. This week, Irish writer-director Frank Berry (Michael Inside and I Used to Live Here) brings us the understated, but powerful, drama that portrays the horrors of Ireland’s Direct Provision system.

Black Panther's Letitia Wright shines as Aisha, a Nigerian asylum-seeker who is held in a Dublin detention centre and develops an emotional connection with a crestfallen security guard, Conor, played by Josh O’Connor. Having fled Nigeria after her father and brother were murdered and with her mother in hiding, Aisha is isolated and treated like a prisoner in the system. Conor, who has his own dark past, befriends Aisha. Far from being a white saviour narrative, Aisha is a portrait of irrefutable integrity and everyday heroism.

Aisha focuses on humanity and connection in a place that is fundamentally inhumane. Wright gives an excellent performance of a wary, traumatised, and intensely focused woman who deals with daily aggressions in an extremely dignified manner.

The movie is a damning indictment of the Irish government and the private companies who profit off vulnerable refugees. It is a must-see movie that shows the public how people in this system are trapped, unable to progress in their lives, and incapable of setting down roots when the threat of being moved or deported always looms over them. Despite being constantly in the headlines, refugees remain largely unseen.