19/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s first feature, about a romance between two black women at a UK immigration detention centre, is a well-intentioned effort that falls flat

Viewing sapphic love as revolutionary, Audre Lorde – a black, lesbian feminist – notably said, “The love between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.” This radical act of self-preservation becomes the centrepiece of the relationship between Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor's two titular Dreamers; the film has just enjoyed its world premiere in the 75th Berlinale’s Panorama strand. Gharoro-Akpojotor, known as a producer, makes her first venture into writing and directing for feature filmmaking after one short film.

Isio (Ronkę Adékoluęjo), an undocumented Nigerian migrant who has worked in the UK for two years, is caught and confined to the menacingly named Hatchworth Removal Centre. She quickly develops a strong rapport with her sympathetic but no-nonsense roommate, Farah (Ann Akinjirin), who teaches her the rules of the schoolyard: don’t trust the guards, and avoid the resident “mean girl” bullies. We learn that Isio is a lesbian who fled her country – in which same-sex relations are heavily criminalised – after her mother found out, leading to an extraordinarily dark series of painful events and her eventual escape. As Isio is plagued by red-lit dreams of what looks like a ceremonial dance, her relationship with Farah grows deeper, and a romance blossoms, even as they are both to be deported should their appeals fail.

Despite its promising conceit, Dreamers emerges as a largely made-for-the-masses drama that fails to dive deeply into Isio’s interiority, her case or her personality. The screenplay’s heavy-handed dialogue often feels dictatorial in a filmic setting ultimately governed by slivers of hope that emerge through the shadow of fear. At one point, Isio’s newfound friend Atefeh (Aiysha Hart), an Iraqi migrant, soliloquises about what our protagonist should do, telling viewers exactly how to take in the story, rather than allowing them to absorb the subtext of their conversation.

An early-film bout of transphobia in the cafeteria further sets the tone for the hostility of the environment, where our protagonist finds solace and friendship in Farah, Atefeh and the guarded Nana (Diana Yekinni), from Ghana. The case officer interviewing Isio asks if she has had relations with a man, implying that this “invalidates” her identity as a lesbian; this encounter serves as a perfect example of the absurd standards towards which each migrant is expected to strive. Dreamers is thus more effective in reiterating the innate paradox of public policy in today’s Europe: humanitarianism is touted, but access is reserved for the select few who can “prove” their suffering on paper.

With cinematography by Anna Patarakina, the visuals of Dreamers are replete with simplistic symbolism, like red lighting for danger and colourful backlighting that at first feels inviting, and then later feels intrusive. Overall, the film’s glossy visual style makes the work feel more like a clean-cut prestige drama than the slightly grittier tale it sets out to be. A character says, “The place is falling apart,” but the production design looks clean, staged and neat, even bordering on unbelievable.

It’s clear that Gharoro-Akpojotor admirably aims to create a sort of utopia-in-a-dystopia, as discovered through an impossible love, but disappointingly, neither the emancipatory potential of sapphic love nor the ramifications of the centre are thoroughly explored. Dreamers is ultimately carried by the chemistry between the two leads, but it’s not enough to make up for the shortcomings. One might instead look to Teddy Award winner Faraz Shariat’s No Hard Feelings [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Faraz Shariat
film profile] (Berlinale Panorama 2020) for a tonally sharper work on queer love among migrants in Europe, partly set at a refugee centre.

Dreamers is a UK production staged by Quiddity Films and BBC Films. Helsinki-based The Yellow Affair holds the rights to its world sales.