Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor in Aisha (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

Throughout, Aisha (played by Letitia Wright, a standout in the “Black Panther” films) continuously faces obstacles. She has fled violence against her family in Nigeria and has been seeking asylum in Ireland for over a year. She lives in temporary housing with other immigrants, waiting in limbo, agonizingly waiting for asylum to be granted, and works in a salon. Bypassing the use of flashbacks, the film relays Aisha’s story in her words—whether she’s talking to a woman whose hair she washes or a stone-faced immigration official. Wright’s Aisha is steely and sympathetic, her plight arduous. There’s the piling of everyday annoyances of a tenuous, bureaucratic system; the sadness and futility she feels about her situation when she talks to her mother back in Nigeria; and the indifferent people all around her—she flinches when a woman tells her that her “English is good.” Wright’s subtle performance is strong in these sorts of quiet reactions.

A budding, secret friendship between Aisha and a sympathetic guard (played warmly by a bashful Josh O’Connor) is more of a side story than the central one, which focuses more upon her painful dilemma.  In one sequence, we listen to brief stories of the plights of other asylum seekers. There is also a scene—with its harshness and suddenness—of the deportation of a young woman, staged in a clear-eyed, non-melodramatic fashion. Another moment finds Aisha retelling the story of a traumatic incident in Nigeria. Because it happened years ago, she can’t remember all the details of how it was described in her original report. Her appointed lawyer tells her she must, otherwise she will be “picked apart.” The non-emotional, hostile immigration system Aisha reckons with, and is controlled by, seems to ultimately judge whether her trauma is valid enough for citizenship.

Frank Berry wrote and directed with the eye of a social realist rather than an overtly stylish, impressionistic one. Shot by Tom Comerford, the film has a milky, soft look that is unremarkable—perhaps to ease the viewer into Aisha’s tough tale. Like most effective social dramas, Aisha gives a sense of feeling of one individual’s particular ordeal. It creates an empathetic microcosm of the many impenetrable immigration systems across the world.