![]() The constraints of the frame serve as a stark counteraction to the wide open Scottish landscapes it captures: freedom and beauty are there, right within view, but just like Omar with his bureaucratic red tape and cultural barriers, we’re held back from actually experiencing them. The film, Ben Sharrock’s delicate and sensitive sophomore effort, is mostly presented in what looks to be the “Academy ratio”: a nearly-square image rather than a wide rectangle. In short, although he’s escaped the immediate danger of his past for now, he’s lonely and miserable. His only friends are his housemates, other refugees from Afghanistan and Sudan – well-meaning men who try to help him make the best of things but don’t seem to really understand him at all. Omar’s strongest tie to home is his grandfather’s beautiful oud, which he stubbornly carries everywhere, although he’s starting to fear he may no longer be able to play the instrument. His parents have instead ended up in Turkey, and during their brief international-calling-card payphone conversations, they can’t stop asking him to send money he doesn’t have, or comparing him unfavorably to his brother who stayed behind back home to fight. Omar (Amir El-Masry) is the island’s newest arrival he’s just completed a trek from Syria. Not yet granted asylum but no longer safe in their various war-torn homelands, they are stuck, you guessed it: in limbo. On a fictional remote Scottish island, a group of refugees await their fate. Limbo (2021 | Scotland | 104 minutes | Ben Sharrock)
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