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 power people can wield in bureaucracies, the administrator repeatedly makes things difficult for Aisha, a young Nigerian woman petitioning for permanent residence in Ireland.
The “Black Panther” star Letitia Wright descends from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to give a quietly fierce performance as Aisha, an asylum seeker in the writer-director Frank Berry’s drama. The reasons for her request unfold during visits with her legal counsel, in video talks with her mother in Lagos and at the careful prodding of the shelter’s fledgling security guard (played with hangdog sympathy by Josh O’Connor of “Challengers”). All the while, Wright breathes deep vulnerability into Aisha’s unsurprising reticence.
At the beauty salon where she works, Aisha’s rightly cagey as she listens to her customers. But at the shelter, she turns warm, when she gives makeovers to fellow immigrants. 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.
Will Aisha convince the decision makers that she cannot safely return to Nigeria? Will Aisha and Conor’s hushed friendship bud into something more? “Aisha” resists tidy answers through the gentle force of its performances and by staying on the rebuffs and uncertainty Aisha suffers.
Aisha
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.
