Sitting in Limbo

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.

Amber Rudd and Theresa May both have a lot to answer for in their careers and few errors of judgement are as shameful as this story, which is still a dreadful stain on the history of Britian.

Anthony Bryan, though Jamican born has lived and worked in the UK all of his life when his Mother came over as part of the Windrush era on the promise of work and opporturnity. If ever a family served as a prime example of hard working immigrants just seeking an honest days pay and a better life, then Bryan and his family were it, with a Mother who served as a nurse for the NHS for thirty years, she's now in poor health and living back in Jamica so when Anthony applies for a new passport to travel back and see her, his status as a British Citizen is brought in at the worst time possible - when the Home Office implemented its new policy to push immigration as an election issue and allocated their teams the job of finding cases that they could propell at the door as fast as possible in order to meet targets. This was incidentally a policy which the Home Office at first denied then later admitted to which led to the resignation of Amber Rudd (Not, notably Theresa May who became destined to be one the worst, unfeeling and uncaring Prime Ministers of UK history, so she had another role awaiting her)

The film follows the cold and complex system of Iimmigration that Anthony and his family are dragged into, which results in him losing his job and his home, with little compensation on the horizon for either, until finally he's forced to take on a solictor he cannot afford in order to seek justice.

It's bad enough that such things should be happening in a modern Britain of 2017 so its quite right and proper that the issue should receive dramatic focus and the cast here take to their roles with great gusto. The pairing of massively underated actor Patrick Robinson and fabulous Nadine Marshall is excellent casting, as Anthony Bryan and his partner Janet who find their lives unravelled as a result of the heartless actions of an uncaring government who employ an equally uncaring group of personnel to weed out the 'low hanging fruit' to add to their immigration targets. The supporting cast of Pippa Bennet-Warner, Jay Simpson and C.J Beckford do really well with largely unwritten roles as a group of family and friends going up against a bureacractic machine whose soul purpose is there to send people home to countries they're no longer familiar with. Piers Morgan, seen briefly in a historical news clip, summed the simplicity of the issue from the perspective of the protagonists - He's British, get him his Passport and let him go him and visit his Mother in Jamaica.

These events will go down as one of the most embarassing stains on British history, up there with Stephen Lawrence, Hillsborough, The Marchioness disaster, to name but a few, where the ordinary people are forced to take on a bastion of the establishment to find Justice. Compelling and important viewing and let's see Baftas for Robinson and Marshall please.

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.

This is such a stain on recent U.K. history. Its not a matter of colour - it's a matter of honour and morals.

Someone arrived Legitimately in U.K. aged 8. Builds a whole life here and is told "he is illegally living here"

Not just that - the way "the system" dealt with these British Citizens is appalling. The Politicians of all shades should hang their heads in shame.

Especially one or to in particular. (Mentioning no names)