Limbo

The second best work from UK for the year 2021, though the film was released in 2020, it made the major film festival runs in 2021. ( My best film from UK in the same period remains Uberto Pasolini's "Nowhere Special.)

"Limbo" has won the top honors at the Scottish BAFTAs, Cairo and Brussels international film festivals. It is a more realistic film depicting the turmoil in the minds of Syrian refugees than "The man who sold his skin" made in the same year. Omar is a realistic and honest Syrian fleeing his homeland that he loves. The performances are credible--but Vikash Bhai's Farhad--an Afghan Zoroastrian, while lovable, has no obvious touches of a Farsi-speaking Afghan with an unmistakable Afghan accent but more of an Indian Parsee speaking English.

The most fascinating touch for me was the almost static camera capturing the empty road ahead of it as a metaphor of the unsure wait of the refugees The second best sequence was the "Jacques Tati" like visual sequence of the postman's car delivering main captured with humor. Young Sharrock has a great potential and needs to walk down "the empty road" (repeatedly shown in his film) to be a major force like Ken Loach.