Aisha

Letitia Wright gives a quietly powerful performance as a Nigerian refugee living in fear of being deported from Ireland. Co-starring Josh O'Connor.

A lot of filmmakers and actors are fearful of stillness. Wordless moments in movies, without any overt action or event going on, are tough to pull off — it’s just the actor and their character’s emotional journey carrying the moment.

When it’s done wrong, it can feel like dead space to the audience. So most films shy away from it.

“Aisha” doesn’t. Star Letitia Wright — best known from the “Black Panther” movies — and writer/director Frank Berry embrace stillness and pregnant pauses. The result is an admittedly slow-moving movie that nonetheless has moments of quiet power.

Wright plays the title character, a young woman who has fled her home of Nigeria after her father and brother were killed by thugs over an unpaid loan. She has been living and working in Ireland for nearly two years after paying smugglers to bring her to the Emerald Isle.

Now she is navigating a complex governmental system set up to address people like her, not to mention the ambivalence or outright hostility of the Irish locals. She is quite literally a woman without a home.

Immigration, illegal and otherwise, continues to be a hot-button issue many people would prefer to avoid. “Aisha” isn’t a political diatribe, but a simple story about one woman that is designed to drive our empathy. That it does, as we feel for this very vulnerable person and root for her to make lasting, safe connections.

Josh O'Connor plays her love interest, Conor, a security guard at the group home where she initially lives. Sometimes his job entails helping move people in and out, sometimes against their choice, and Aisha at first sees him as just another one of the uniformed law enforcement types who hold power over and her fellow refugees.

The administrator (Stuart Graham) is a straight-up pill who has taken a dislike to Aisha, probably because she’s one of the few who will stand up and speak out. They even hassle her about buying her own food because she doesn’t have confidence their preparation methods for Muslim-observant halal is genuine. Apparently a couple of minutes to warm it up in the microwave is an unbearable diversion from the rules.

Conor agrees to let her microwave it in the employees’ lounge after hours, and a friendship begins to develop. He’s had his own struggles, including addiction and prison, but seems to be on a better path — one he’d like to encourage Aisha along as well.

Almost without explicitly saying so, a tenderness grows between them. This is complicated when Aisha’s troubles mount and she is shipped off to Glentill, another facility deep in the countryside, which also means giving up her job as a hairdresser.

Aisha is in contact with her mother (Rosemary Aimiyekagbon) via sporadic video calls. She is hiding out near their home of Benin City as the criminals continue to seek their retribution. We also learn Aisha herself has not escaped their despicable violence.

Things go from there. There’s not a whole lot of narrative in this movie per se. Aisha will have occasional hearings with immigration officials or talk to her solicitor (Lorcan Cranitch), who are starkly honest about her chances of receiving permanent residency. Deportation is a very real and frightening possibility.

Mostly, it’s about mood and tone. Wright is a compelling and empathetic figure as Aisha. I wish the movie had explored her budding relationship with Conor more. He kind of gets shunted off to the side as a lovelorn puppydog. O'Connor perambulates as best he can in an underwritten role.

Still, this is sensitive storytelling around a contentious reality — one being experienced by tens of millions in Europe, in North America and around the globe. The film observantly approaches its subjects as people rather than statistics or a problem to be solved.