Given the refugee crisis once again developing on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Scottish writer/director Ben Sharrock’s cross-cultural drama couldn’t be better timed.
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| With nothing but time on their hands, a quartet of asylum seekers — from left, Omar (Amir El-Masry), Wasef (Ola Orebiyi), Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) and Farhad (Vikash Bhai) — struggle to fill every hour of every long, lonely day. |
Omar (Amir El-Masry) and Farhad (Vikash Bhai) are among a couple dozen asylum seekers “temporarily” housed on one of the remote Uist islands, off the northwest Scottish coast. It’s mostly a soul-deadening waiting game — amplified by Sharrock’s very slow pacing — although part of each day is spent taking outrageously misjudged “cultural awareness” classes taught by a couple of clueless locals (Sidse Babett Knudsen and Kenneth Collard).
At other times, these men make a lengthy trek to the island’s lone phone booth, plunked in the middle of nowhere, and take turns chatting with family members in their respective countries. Omar, quiet and withdrawn, has fled the strife in Syria; his parents have safely relocated in Istanbul, while his brother Nabil has remained behind as a member of the resistance.
Omar’s prized possession is his grandfather’s oud, which he never lets out of his sight, always carrying its oversized instrument case. Back in Syria, before the country went to hell, Omar was poised to follow his grandfather’s footsteps, as a master of this beautiful, lute-like instrument.
But Omar’s right hand was injured somewhere along the way, and he’s thus been unable to play. More crucially, he’s unwilling to play: burdened by a degree of survivor’s guilt far heavier than the oud itself. The occasional phone chats with his mother (voiced by Darina Al Joundi) merely amplify the feeling that he should have remained at his brother’s side, to fight the good fight.
Farhad, something of a cheerful opportunist, assigns himself the role of Omar’s “talent manager.” But Farhad’s surface merriment conceals his own, quite serious reason for having fled Afghanistan. At one point, he impulsively steals a rooster and makes it a pet, naming it Freddie after his favorite musician, Freddie Mercury.
Farhad wants something he can call his own, akin to Omar and his oud.
