Sitting in Limbo

Deeply powerful true-life drama about just one of the people so egregiously treated during Britain's Windrush scandal. It's understated, and all the more moving for it - simmering with rage, you find yourself keeping tears at bay for almost the whole running time.

Year 1948. Post-WWII era.. British government invited around 500+ workers from Jamaica to settle in UK to help rebuild their country. The first batch of those settlers embarked HMT Empire Windrush. Their offsprings are known as the Windrush generation in UK. In 2010, the Home office destroyed the landing cards of thousands of Windrush immigrants and in 2012, David Cameron's administration formed a committee called hostile environment working group that echoed a broader rancour towards migrants in the UK. As the local officers and managers kept hunting for 'low hanging fruit' (easy target), some 850 people were wrongly detained between 2012-17. And one of them was Anthony Bryan. This is his dramatic memoir of his ordeal. Patrick Robinson delivers a mature immaculate performance. An eye opening and thought provoking drama as often we turn a blind eye to the struggles and challenges that 'not legal' migrants face. As Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary who later resigned, apologized that this policy was a mistake and she said that she saw this only as an individual issue not as a systemic problem.. A must watch ..

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

The true life story of Anthony Bryan (Patrick Robinson), a man who spent his whole life living and working in the UK, after moving here with his mother at the age of eight, only to find himself caught up in the crossfire of the government's 'Hostile Environment' policy, where he was suddenly challenged to produce documentation that he was legally living in the UK. What followed was an unthinkable nightmare, as he found himself plunged into an unduly punitive cycle, where he was forced to report to a government agency each week, before being rounded up and held in a detention centre in Dover, hundreds of miles from his home.

It's easy to think horror stories are things that just get stored in the deepest reaches of the human mind, purely fictional things that exist purely in the back of our souls. It's unimaginable that any of us could truly find ourselves plunged into a 'living nightmare', which we have no control over or power to stop, and yet only a few years ago, that is exactly what happened to Anthony Bryan, and numourous other members of the 'Windrush' generation, as news and politics was filled with rhetoric about 'getting tough on immigration.'

Although director Stella Corradi and writer Stephen S. Thompson do not shy away from dramatizing the effect on Anthony's nearest and dearest, including wife Janet (Nadine Marshall), daughter Eileen (Pippa Bennett-Warner) and son Gary (C.J. Beckford), it's still ultimately his personal, living ordeal, and so it's lucky that lead star Robinson manages to deliver a performance of such quiet understatement, an honest, hard working, law abiding man suddenly hounded with such Gestapo like force, before losing his liberty and getting caged up like a criminal, and the subsequent impact on his mental health and sanity.

Shamefully, the whole Windrush scandal largely went over my head, but this is the first time I've seen the full horror of what actually went on, and it really gets under your skin. An uncomfortable, but well made, well acted and very effective piece indeed. ****

It is a "must make" film and as such it is important that it is made - that the word gets out there. And... importance can be synonymous with quality - but only to a certain level. Documentaries can, to a large extent, be valued more on the message they convey than their artistic merit.

Sitting Limbo hovers between two genres; the informative and the artistic - as do many other "life story films". The genre is problematic as the end result is; either likely to be accused of diverging from facts under the "artistic licence" OR being true to history and respecting the facts to the point dullness.

Sitting in Limbo certainly edges toward the documentary format - it, unfortunately has not hit the sweet spot in the middle ground. And so recommendations become dependent on preference of style:

If you consider facts superior in importance to dramaturgy - chances are you will appreciate Stella Cor.radio's work. If, on the other hand, you value artistic accomplishments above facts - chances are you will feel Sitting in Limbo runs a little dry.

There is one argument which would make the above redundant, that is; IF the pacing of the film was an artists attempt to lure the viewer into similar frustration as that of our protagonist. If the "why is nothing happening" frustration is actually part of a greater master plan. If so, the greatness is likely to be appreciated by few - but would motivate some very high scoring. In any event - be prepared to feel frustration.

This film was incredibly moving, as its story and brilliant presentation eliminated any sight of actors. It simply allowed a loving family to play out its tragedy before my eyes. Within ten minutes of watching this film, I quickly realized that I wasn't sneaking a peek at the injustice sought upon strangers from a foreign land but rather how easy it was for me, as an American, to not consider any other nationality of people to be a government's target for soul destruction because of the color of skin. So, quite honestly, this film didn't just educate me but humbled my very existence in the most entertaining way ever.