“A decision that was very important to me early on was to have the refugees front and center of the film,” Sharrock adds. I loved that he puts Omar into the forefront of the narrative - there isn’t a Westernized character who is showing Omar a better way of living.” It just so happens that this man is fleeing his country out of necessity. Something that anybody can go through at any given time. It’s so warm and inviting, and it touches on themes about family and identity and loss of identity. “But with ‘Limbo,’ honestly, I’ve never laughed and cried at the same time from reading a script. “I was a little tentative to take on anything that has anything touching on the refugee crisis,” El-Masry admits, speaking from London. At first, the actor wasn’t sure he wanted to play a refugee, but Sharrock’s balance of absurdist humor and genuine heart convinced him this was a necessary telling. El-Masry studied the oud - Omar’s chosen instrument, which he hauls with him all over the island - and worked with a dialect coach to give his Arabic the right accent. Sharrock cast British Egyptian actor Amir El-Masry as Omar after seeing a photo of him online - something El-Masry only discovered recently - and was struck, during the actor’s audition, by his ability to convey Omar’s vulnerability. ‘Limbo,’ a festival favorite that deserves a larger audience, focuses on a young Syrian musician and other refugees on a remote Scottish island. Movies Review: ‘Limbo’ is an immigrant story destined to outlive its time It’s just human beings in the center of it.”
It started out with this mission to humanize the refugee experience and to write a story about refugees that isn’t about the refugee crisis, in a way. “I felt like there was this gap in the middle. “On one side there was a demonizing of refugees, which is de-humanizing, and on the other side we had the pitying of refugees, which emerged a little bit later based on the sheer amount of coverage of the refugee crisis. “I knew I wanted to make a film about the subject matter, and what I was looking at specifically was the representation of refugees in the media,” the director explains. Sharrock originally considered making it as a short film while in film school, inspired by his time living in Damascus before the Syrian civil war, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that he found the right entry point into the story. The film, which follows Omar, a Syrian musician waiting in a small community for the results of his asylum request, is the result a decade of work by Sharrock, whose debut film, “Pikadero,” came out in 2015. It was recently nominated for a BAFTA Award for outstanding British film but won’t have its official U.K.
It was an official selection of the canceled 2020 Cannes Film Festival and premiered, instead, at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. theaters via Focus Features, has seen its international rollout unexpectedly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. So the idea of sending asylum seekers to a remote Scottish island was really an absurdist concept, and now that’s potentially becoming a reality.” The concept for me from the beginning was knowing I was going to use absurdism and humor in the telling of the story about refugees. “And here we are five years later and it’s as relevant as it has been. “It’s something I started five years ago and you think, ‘Is this going to be relevant?’” the writer-director says, speaking from Scotland over Zoom. It may sound equals parts inhumane and absurd to force refugees into isolation on an island, but that’s almost exactly the plot of Ben Sharrock’s second film, “Limbo.” The report also suggested using remote Scottish islands as a place to house refugees - a recommendation that was immediately denounced by Scotland. Home Secretary Priti Patel announced potential plans to send asylum seekers to processing centers farther afield - the Isle of Man or even Gibraltar.
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