This highly personal debut feature by Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor captures the inhumanity of an asylum process that’s cut through with small glimmers of hope.
If there’s one thing that 2025 has done really well it’s to place out in the open the fact that the so-called “system” for securing political asylum is a sham. Rather than representing the collective moral outlook of a country – or what that outlook purports to be – it instead leans on violence and intimidation, making a desired choice of residence less a question of a rock and a hard place, and more a rock and a rock.
Dreamers, by first-time filmmaker Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor who channels her personal experiences, initially flouts a Prisoner Cell Block H vibe, as Nigerian refugee Isio (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo) is flung into Hatchworth Removal Centre (likely modelled on the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre, one of the largest in Europe) while her claim for asylum is being processed.
Her fear of being sent back home is mortal, yet it seems nothing she can say or do is able to amply convince the officious on-site administrators that she’s not spinning a fanciful yarn about her traumas. The film seems to be suggesting that when you have a system which relies entirely on having to believe subjective testimony, where applicants have to somehow prove that they have been driven away from their homes and fear for their lives, then you wield the power of life and death in merely doubting. Isio is gay which is illegal in Nigeria, and she breaks down when a stone-faced operative asks her, “Well how do I know you’re gay?”. What can you say to that?
During Isio’s agonising wait for clarity, her roommate, Farah (Ann Akinjirin), rallies to her cause. There’s a sensitivity to the way Gharoro-Akpojotor depicts this blossoming friendship of political co-dependence and, eventually, so much more. The initial steps are tentative – just getting Isio to engage with her fellow detainees and hear their stories is hard enough. Yet in a situation like this you have an abundance of time, and their long, often nostalgic chats eventually lead to bed sharing and schemes to escape and, possibly, freedom.
One issue with the film is that it sometimes looks a little too slick. Anna Patarakina’s atmospheric cinematography makes the center feel more like a school than a prison; a place for formal re-education rather than punishment. Plus the fond way that Isio and Farrah are shot and lit sometimes works against a general tone of angst and depression. Yet sometimes that works in favour of the film, as these places can feel comfortable and inviting until you’re woken in the night and dragged out kicking and screaming by a burly guard who’s completely deaf to your pleas of mercy.
Dreamers is slight but effective, and perhaps doesn’t quite come back from a twist that occurs about two thirds of the way in when Isio’s situation suddenly changes. Yet its fervent cry against such bureaucratic, inhumane nightmares is loudly felt, and props to Gharoro-Akpojotor for suggesting that they have yet to really see any light at the end of this long and very dark tunnel.
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