Sharrock pivots from quirky Jarmusch-like comedy into something more profound, more melancholic in the film’s second half. Police occasionally stop by to arrest those refugees whose asylum petition has been denied. But even racism can rear its ugly head in this lonely place: two hooligans and their girlfriends stop Omar on the beach and hurl every single racial epithet and stereotype at him to later offer him a ride back to town the word “not” has been scrawled in red on a sign that reads “refugees welcomed” and a Sikh grocer with a strong Glasgow accent gives Omar a linguistic lesson on British racism. They are forbidden from taking on any jobs since this could get them deported as their papers are being processed. He and fellow refugees Farhad (Vikash Bhai), an Afghan refugee who learned to speak English listening to Freddie Mercury and now wears a moustache in his honor, and the West African “siblings” Abedi (Kwabena Anash) and Wasef (Ola Orebiyi), spend their time watching bootleg copies of “Friends” on the apartment they share or staring, with some degree of amusement, at the quirky habits of the island’s inhabitants. He carries the case wherever he goes it’s his only connection to the motherland outside the emotionally draining phone calls he makes to his family from a solitary payphone in the middle of a highway. Omar has arrived to this island carrying his grandfather’s oud inside a case, his dreams of pursuing a musical career in England put on hold not only by the long wait but by a huge cast on his arm. Courtesy of Colin Tennant / Focus Features Vikash Bhai (left) stars as “Farhad” and Amir El-Masry (right) stars as “Omar” in director Ben Sharrock’s LIMBO, a Focus Features release.Ĭr.Omar (British-Egyptian actor Amir El-Masry) is one of these students, a young Syrian refugee who has left his family behind in Turkey after they left Syria and who won’t speak to his brother Nabil after he went back to fight with the rebel forces. In another session later on in the film, they will be asked how to use the phrase “I used to” in a sentence the refugees’ responses pack a wallop, turning upside down the film’s deadpan humor. On this occasion, they are being taught how to properly behave with women at a dance. “Limbo” opens in the middle of the first of a series of cultural awareness classes taught by two droll government officials -Helga (Sidse Babbett-Knudsen) and Boris (Kenneth Collard)- to a group of male refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa who have been relocated to an isolated, stark and beautiful Scottish island to wait for a decision on their request for asylum. In other words, we here have a filmmaker who, with only two films, has developed a distinctive style and point-of-view and one we all film lovers should keep an eye on. Based on what I’ve read about that feature debut, “Limbo” shares with “Pikadero” the same deadpan sense of humor, a fine eye and ear for the absurd, and a love for open spaces, long static shots and symmetrical framing and both owe a debt to the works Aki Kaurismaki and Jim Jarmusch. His first, “Pikadero” (2015), the story of a Basque couple’s desperate attempts to find a place where they can be alone (and which Sharrock shot entirely in Basque), only played the Festival circuit and is now available on Amazon Prime. Audiences who come across “Limbo,” Ben Sharrock’s quirky, heartbreaking and confident fish out of water tale about a Syrian refugee in the middle of nowhere, might be surprised to know that this is only the Scottish filmmaker’s second feature.
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