Director: Bruce Goodison.
Starring: Naoufal Ousellam, Masieh Zarrien,Yasmin Mwanza, Toby Jones, Simon Meacock.
Running Time: 69 minutes.
Certificate: 15.
Synopsis: Abdul (Masieh Zarrien) arrives in the UK from a village in Afghanistan and joins a class of teens in a refuge home. He soon discovers that England isn’t what he had hoped for and that friends from his home country may be his enemies in the UK.
LEAVE TO REMAIN goes where not many films have dared to go before. The movie is based on interviews with real young immigrants in the UK who have spoken of their experience with authorities here and in their home country, fellow asylum seekers, and the horrendous pasts they are escaping from.
The film shows a group of young immigrants from countries like Afghanistan, Nigeria and more seeking help at a refuge home where their teacher (Toby Jones) gets incredibly invested in their lives and fights hard for all of them to get ‘leave to remain’, especially Omar, played by Naoufal ‘Noof’ Ousellam. Omar borders a leader of the pack, mainly because he is supposedly older than eighteen, but pretends to be younger to be treated as a child. He is close to receiving his leave to remain when Abdul, a fellow Afghani boy arrives in the country, thinking he’ll get to stay forever, unaware of the procedure he’s got ahead of him. Abdul is a risk to Omar’s application as he knows something about him which could seriously harm his eligibility.
There is no sugar-coating the situation. Pro-immigration and the asylum seekers are not depicted as innocent victims, and there is acknowledgement of lies and exaggerations which go into applying for leave to remain, a result of the paranoia and disbelief which many authorities have for the situations in which some asylum seekers find themselves in. The film deals with immigration, assimilation, finding yourself and post-traumatic stress disorder and the actors do a tremendous job of conveying the spectrum of emotions which go into not only being a foreigner, but also a teenager thrust into adulthood and someone with no family relying on the kindness and cruelty of strangers. Their pasts are not only inclusive of things which have scarred them and pained them, but as it emerges, there is more to run from than the pain which others have caused them in their home country.
Unfortunately, LEAVE TO REMAIN becomes slightly too long-winded towards the end and takes on the pace and tone of a film about every day occurrences instead of the highly dramatic and traumatic experience which the group of teenagers are going through.
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