Black Panther star, Letitia Wright is now starring in Aisha, a film about a young Nigerian refugee woman facing a myriad of difficulties as she seeks asylum in Ireland. Wright portrays the role of Aisha who befriends an ex-convict, Josh O’Connor while seeking asylum and under constant threat.
Speaking to Sky News, Wright said that she prepared for the role by speaking to people who had faced similar issues to her character. Aisha tells the story of the real struggles of immigrants in Ireland.
The 29-year old actress told Sky News ” Frank [Berry] was able to introduce me to the people who he’s been communicating with for the past four or five years of him making the script and putting it together, so I got to have real conversations with women who’ve gone through similar situations as Aisha”
“I got to dive into the documentaries, dive into the research material that’s provided for me via Frank and our production company, and I just got to sit with it and allow myself to be a vessel for these stories and to feed that into the character of Aisha”, she said.
Frank Berry the writer and director of Aisha, who is Irish, told Sky News that the idea of the film occurred to him when he was researching his last film about the Irish prison system, when he learned it was run by the same government department as the immigration system.
He then took the time to research and meet people with similar story to make Aisha “as close to the truth as possible”. “It comes from a documentary impulse, because my background is documentary – so it’s to create a space for discussion really”, he told Sky News. @letitiawright @joshographee @frankberryirl
Aisha is released on November 17 in Cinemas and on Sky Cinema.
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