A dark, curly-haired musician wanders through a blustery, frigid no-man’s-land in Ben Sharrock’s Limbo. The man in question is indeed not Llewyn Davis, though the similarities to that Coen Brother’s characters are noteworthy. Both are men out of place, out of time even, assaulted by the realities of a society who not only doesn’t welcome them but struggles to see their humanity and worth.

Earning positive marks out of its Cannes 2020 debut before a laudable festival circuit run, Sharrock’s story of a Syrian musician seeking asylum while stuck on an isolated Scottish isle is a melancholic spin on the refuge story. Stranded with other immigrants from a Benetton’s assortment of developing countries, Omar (Amir El-Masry, in a sincere and soft-spoken turn) questions his decision to leave behind his war-torn home country of Syria, where his brother Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) has remained to fight back ISIS troops. The two are ideological opposites – the warrior and poet – and a rift has grown between the brothers since Omar fled without saying goodbye, a fact that haunts his stay in the ramshackle temporary-housing he’s been put up in.

Plopped atop the windswept bluffs of this far-flung Scotland nowhere, Omar befriends the affable Afghani Farhad (Vikash Bhai) and a pair of squabbling West African brothers, Wasef (Ola Orebiyi) and Abedi (Kwabena Ansah). The troop are forced to attend immigrant assimilation classes, seminars put on by an odd pair of locals with topics that graze areas like sexual consent, job interview techniques, and how to make conversation about your “past life”; who you were, where you’re from, what you did.

Though Sharrock’s script leans heavily into ironic, wry humor in these moments, they also serve to underscore the idea of divorcing one’s “former” self from one’s “new” self. This notion that in immigrating, one must effectively sacrifice who they are is at the center of Omar’s journey and Limbo writ large. It’s especially in focus while Omar makes phone calls back home where his mother passes along alarming intel about his brother’s insurgency, or when Omar tries to scratch his craving for the apricot fruit leathers his mother would make back home. In many senses, Omar is a dead man walking, a fact his father won’t let him forget, intoning over and over again that a musician who doesn’t play his instrument is already dead.

Though he carries his instrument case everywhere he goes, Omar suffers the loss of either his ability or drive to play the oud, a short-neck lute-type instrument popular throughout the Middle East. To Omar, his oud doesn’t sound right, and he cannot bring himself to play it; unresolved trauma, family drama, and guilt weighing upon his conscience too heavily to allow for musical expression to come bursting forth. Donning a stark blue parka and the casket of the thing that once brought him the most joy and purpose, Omar is slow-moving but unstoppable, much like the movie he is trapped in, as he wanders his new life in the wintery Scottish Isles.

Feelings of isolation and worthlessness haunt our band of asylum-seekers but none feel the tug between past and present like Omar. The four friends wait in limbo for a distant court to rule upon their worth, dictating whether they will be sent back to wherever they have come from or granted asylum where, in doing so, they are gifted the ability to rediscover their self-worth, to work, to live and love freely. There is a Syrian saying that goes “tomorrow there’ll be apricots“. Omar fled the land of apricots for the desolation of Scotland’s winter, only to later discover that his family apricot tree had been bombed and turned to ash. Limbo asks, in light of all this, can there still be apricots tomorrow?

CONCLUSION: Sardonic and soulful, ‘Limbo’ is a slow-moving and darkly funny drama about the ennui of immigration and the guilt of leaving behind a life unfulfilled that crescendoes to a thunderous, lyrical peak.