Farhad’s perplexed but spirited response to his strange new surroundings provide the film with its richest seam of quiet, almost Kaurismäki-like comedy, as he enthusiastically forages for worthless western junk discarded for charity, and grows invested in a donated “Friends” boxset decades after the world stopped debating whether or not Ross and Rachel were on a break. A stubborn optimist whose chief passions in life are Freddie Mercury and rearing chickens, Farhad attempts to get the reluctant young man reengaged with the world, appointing himself his talent agent and nagging him to play his otherwise untouched oud at the open mic night. Local distractions are limited to a barren-shelved supermarket, a joyless pub glumly promoting an open mic night, and mile upon mile of stony, sodden coastline and sulky sky, shot by cinematographer Nick Cooke - with a deftly shifting aspect ratio - in a way that implies ominous infinity.įrom this thrown-together band of outsiders, Omar bonds most closely with older but less worldly Afghan refugee Farhad (Vikash Bhai), mainly through the latter’s sheer affable persistence. He’s one of several single male asylum seekers being held in a desolate, thistly island village while their applications are all too slowly processed.
We’re not told exactly by what harrowing course of events gifted young musician Omar (El-Masry) has washed up in the outer Hebrides with a broken arm, far from his family still in Syria, but his dazed, phlegmatic response to his severe new surroundings tells us what we need to know. Focusing on individual human foibles and yearnings rather than attempting any more universal statement on a global humanitarian crisis, Sharrock also places considerable faith in his excellent lead, British-Egyptian actor Amir El-Masry, to convey unspoken layers of trauma in his character’s psychological makeup. Some will approach “Limbo” with a measure of justifiable skepticism, as a story of Middle Eastern and African refugees written by a white Scotsman, so the film is wise to take a micro perspective rather than a macro one.
A droll romantic dramedy set in Spain’s Basque region, that film established Sharrock’s international outlook, which is maintained in “Limbo” even as it circles home: His original screenplay draws on time spent living in Syria and filming in Algerian refugee camps. production from a filmmaker whose 2015 debut “Pikadero” racked up miles on the festival circuit - even landing the top prize at Edinburgh - but was largely shrugged off by distributors. Even if its Croisette presence was theoretical, it’s still a profile-boosting starting point for a small-scale U.K. Premiering in Toronto’s Discovery strand, “Limbo” was to have been in the nixed Cannes official selection that was retrospectively announced in the summer.