Letitia Wright, elsewhere eating up the box office in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, stars as the eponymous protagonist in the Irish film Aisha
, stars as the eponymous protagonist - a young Nigerian woman seeking asylum in contemporary Ireland. We watch as she endures both large and small stresses. The staff at her accommodation are dismissive. There are endless delays on her application. We learn that, despite securing work at a hairdresser’s, she can be moved to another location with no notice. Distraction comes when she makes friends with a new employee at the centre played by Josh O’Connor .
“A lot of the people told me they had no faith that the managers had been trained to deal with vulnerable people,” Berry says. “An awful lot of discussions were around a lack of training – somebody early on said to me that the manager in their centre worked his way up from the kitchen. Great for him, but is this manager the right person to be dealing with people who are traumatised?”
“I did this in Michael Inside as well. There, I didn’t want to vilify the prison guards in the way you might for a genre film. I feel that’s less real. I met some managers early on. I met a business person, and I also met somebody who I felt was empathic. I wanted it to be very fair and very real. But I also wanted to express the fact that they’re running it like a business.”
“When I was younger my dad was always an enthusiastic amateur photographer,” Berry says. “And he used to film us with cine cameras. People would say that I must have got my filmmaking from my dad. But actually, as I got older, I started to reflect, and I feel that I got my filmmaking more from my mother. She is just a great listener and somebody with a very strong conviction for social justice. I was listening to her my whole life. Her values are in the films.
“Not a rom-com I think,” he says with a smile. “I’m not drawn to those at the moment. I love film-making and I’m drawn to the prospect of making something about my own history, my own life. That’s always there. Apart from that, I just come across a subject and find that it won’t let me go.”
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