Aisha (2022) Review: Waiting as a Form of Cruelty

Is Aisha worth watching?

Yes. Aisha is a patient, quietly furious drama about the asylum system, and Letitia Wright’s restrained performance makes its bureaucratic subject feel intensely personal. Frank Berry avoids melodrama and speeches, showing instead how waiting, uncertainty and endless paperwork wear a person down. The reservation is that the same restraint can feel flat: the film deliberately withholds big dramatic moments, and viewers expecting a conventional arc may find it more sobering than gripping.

What is Aisha about?

Aisha Osagie (Letitia Wright) is a young Nigerian woman who has fled danger at home and applied for international protection in Ireland. While her case is assessed, she lives in the country’s direct provision system, the network of shared accommodation centres where asylum seekers wait, often for years, with limited rights to work or make choices about their own lives.

Aisha is educated, proud and determined to keep her dignity, but the system seems designed to test it at every turn. Her one real connection is Conor (Josh O’Connor), a former prisoner working at the centre, whose kindness and own history of struggle bring him close to her. As the months pass, her case moves slowly through interviews, appeals and decisions made far out of her sight.

Aisha is written and directed by Frank Berry. It is an Irish film in English, with Lorcan Cranitch and Denis Conway in the supporting cast.

Letitia Wright holds it together

Wright’s performance is built on stillness. Aisha rarely raises her voice, and much of the film’s emotion comes through her posture, her careful politeness in official meetings and the flashes of anger and exhaustion that break through when she is alone. It is a far cry from Wright’s blockbuster roles, and she shows how much can be conveyed with very little.

Josh O’Connor matches her with a gentle, understated turn. Conor is awkward and kind, a man who knows what it means to be judged by a system, and their friendship is written with tact. The film resists turning it into a conventional romance, which makes their connection more believable and more moving.

A system shown without sensation

Berry’s approach is close to documentary. Scenes in cramped rooms, canteens and administrative offices show the small indignities of direct provision: shared spaces, rigid rules, the constant threat of being moved and the waiting for letters that will decide a person’s future. The film rarely shows outright cruelty; instead it reveals how indifference and delay can be crueller than any single villain.

That realism is the film’s strength. The drama never feels manufactured, and its anger is all the stronger for being quiet. Viewers who know I, Daniel Blake will recognise the same interest in how bureaucracy grinds people down, but Berry’s tone is gentler and more intimate.

Restraint that sometimes flattens

The film’s commitment to understatement means that some scenes feel repetitive, as the same frustrations recur without much variation. Secondary characters, including Aisha’s fellow residents, are sketched rather than developed, and the story’s shape is more a sequence of setbacks than a building drama. The quiet approach is deliberate, but it may leave some viewers admiring the film more than feeling fully swept up in it.

Who should watch Aisha?

It suits viewers who appreciate social-realist drama, stories about migration and justice, and admirers of Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor. It is a slow, sober film best watched with full attention. It deals with trauma, grief and institutional mistreatment, but nothing is graphic, making it suitable for older teenagers and adults.

If it resonates, consider these next:

• The Magdalene Sisters, another Irish film about women trapped inside an institution that claims to care for them.
• Steve, a more recent Irish drama about vulnerable people and the institutions meant to protect them.

The verdict

Aisha is a humane, sobering drama that exposes the everyday cruelty of an asylum system through one woman’s experience. Its restraint occasionally flattens the drama, but Letitia Wright’s remarkable performance and Frank Berry’s honest direction make it a film worth seeking out.

Rating: 4/5