Director: Adura Onashile

Stars: Déborah Lukumuena, Le'Shantey Bonsu, Danny Sapani, Liana Turner

This impressive feature debut from writer-director Adura Onashile charts the experiences of a pair of refugees. The troubled Grace (French actor Lukumuena from ‘Divines’) has recently arrived in the UK from West Africa with her eleven-year-old daughter Ama (Bonsu) and is working as a cleaner in Glasgow. Over-protective toward her daughter, Grace forbids her daughter from leaving their small council flat. Ama alerts the locals to her presence however, when she sounds the alarm when a fire breaks out at a neighbouring tower block. Ama is sent to school where she finds an ally in the cheeky fellow pupil Fiona (Turner). The picture is low on plot, dragging a little occasionally, but big on atmosphere. It begins tactile and dreamlike as cinematographer Tasha Black’s warm lighting imbues the flat with a womblike feel, then gradually introduces splashes of vivid neon colour and daylight sequences as the duo acclimatise to their new surroundings.

David Willoughby

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