LONDON – Egyptian actor Amir El-Masry was reluctant to read the script of “Limbo.” He was concerned the film, about refugees waiting on a remote Scottish island for residency, would involve established tropes about a Western savior coming to the rescue.
Instead, it made him reach for the phone and call his agent. “I was like, ‘I was wrong, you know, it isn’t just any old kind of story about the refugee crisis.’” El-Masry rejoiced that his character, Omar, “is in the forefront of the narrative and there isn’t a Western character leading him on and letting him forget about his past,” which was exactly as writer-director Ben Sharrock had intended. “Limbo” is based on Sharrock’s own experience of studying and living in Arab countries, visiting