Lugging around his grandfather’s oud (basically a Middle Eastern guitar) everywhere he goes around this empty and drab isle, Omar’s limbo also comes from ambition, guilt, and provision.ĭue to fleeing war-torn Syria, Omar is estranged from his immediate family but does occasionally get to speak to his parents from an isolated phone booth on the side of the road (just one of the many surreal quirks on display here that are amplified thanks to staggering cinematography from Nick Cooke, with views that adapt to and serve the shifting aspect ratio) having conversations about safety, money, and keeping the family together. Specifically, it’s the fact that while the chickens look nearly identical, they are in fact different breeds, to which a character applies that misconception to race relations in Scotland (although the point still speaks to all privileged people) and the plights of refugees of various ethnicities and backgrounds they and all their struggles are the same to them.Īs for Omar (Amir El-Masry delivering a strong performance weighing and balancing the idiosyncratic with the profound), the term “limbo” doesn’t just speak to that space between awaiting asylum and freedom itself. While there are quite a few impressionable moments speaking to the migrant lifestyle (and from multiple perspectives given that writer and director Ben Sharrock has dedicated a portion of his life ingratiating himself with actual refugees) in Limbo, the one dialogue exchange that keeps coming back to mind involves a discussion on chickens. Separated from his Syrian family, he is stuck on a remote Scottish island awaiting the fate of his asylum request.
Starring Amir El-Masry, Vikash Bhai, Ola Orebiyi, Kwabena Ansah, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Kais Nashif, Kenneth Collard, Sanjeev Kohli, Cameron Fulton, Lewis Gribben, Grace Chilton, and Raymond Mearns.
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