Following the world premiere of Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s poignant and romantic debut feature Dreamers at the 75th Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was in competition for the prestigious queer film Teddy Award, its lead actors Ronkę Adékoluęjo and Ann Akinjirin speak exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann.
Loosely based on Gharoro-Akpojotor’s own experience as an asylum seeker, it follows Nigerian migrant Isio (Adékoluęjo) who has been sent to a removal centre after living and working while undocumented in the UK. She is convinced that her only way out is to play by the rules, even when her charismatic new roommate, Farah (Akinjirin), warns her otherwise. While adjusting to life in the removal centre, Isio finds herself falling in love with Farah. As her faith in the system wanes, her feelings for Farah deepen.
Ronkę Adékoluęjo recently completed the London run of director Max Webster’s acclaimed reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre, playing Gwendolen alongside Sharon D Clarke and Ncuti Gatwa. She previously starred at the National in Blues for an Alabama Sky which earned her a Best Actress nomination at the 2022 Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Among many other accolades, she was named a Screen International Star of Tomorrow in 2023 and nominated for a Royal Television Society Award as Supporting Actress for Rain Dogs. Her other screen credits include three seasons of the spy thriller series Alex Rider, playing Penny on Doctor Who opposite Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie, and the films Chevalier, Been So Long, Christopher Robin and Ready Player One.
Ann Akinjirin played Alissa in Michaela Coel’s Emmy, BAFTA, GLAAD, Dorian and Independent Spirit Award-winning series I May Destroy You. More recently she played Aunt Fanny on the BBC’s The Famous Five, has had recurring roles on BBC’s Trigonometry and appeared in Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight. Among her other television credits are Beforeigners, Electric Dreams: The World of Philip K. Dick – The Commuter, and Brave New World. On film, she has appeared in James Marsh’s King of Thieves and Simon West’s Old Guy. In 2010, she founded the theatre company Harts, serving as Artistic Director until 2020. She has also worked with Deafinitely Theatre as a movement director and with the National Youth Theatre as a writer and director, creating inclusive productions for audiences with hearing and visual impairments.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: What was the draw of being involved in Dreamers back when it was at the script stage?
Ann Akinjirin: “I’m all about visibility. So often people don’t get to see themselves on screen, so whenever I get an opportunity to be part of creating visibility—in whatever form it is—I’m always ignited. Being able to give light and voice and a physical form to this type of story was immediately appealing to me. Also, Joy is a great friend of mine, so being given the chance to tell her story was more than enough for me to say yes. Before this I’d worked on her short film, For Love, which gave me the experience of being part of telling this type of story with her, but I’d actually known her for many years before that.”
Ronkę Adékoluęjo: “What drew me to it—being of Nigerian decent—was definitely the idea that these stories get lost in the collective experiences. Nigerians aren’t particularly proud of their queer community. I always like to go against all of those things. When society tells you, ‘This is good’ or ‘This is bad’, I’m like, ‘Let’s do the other thing!'”
“The stimulus for this story is really important to me. I met Joy at a barbecue years and years ago and we immediately magnetized to each other. We spoke a lot about her experience and where and how she was living at that time. I’m interested in how our stories and experiences all relate to each other because I believe that all humans are interchangeable at all times. Joy’s story really moved me and when I met her I had a lot of love and space in my body and in my heart for her. So I was like, ‘Whatever you need from me, I’m an artist and I’m here.’ Plus, when you’re an available actor you have to take the work where you can get it! Especially when it expands your artistry on this level.”
“It was so complex to explore what it means to be held captive in a place where you’re not in prison—because you’re not a criminal—but you’re treated like one. Then on top of that, to find love in that space. I knew that it was going to expand my imagination and my creativity in order to make this not only relatable, but authentic and grounded. I feel like sometimes it’s easy to try to portray an experience, as opposed to really serving an experience and being present and available for it. Also, what drew me to it is how scared I was of it and whenever something terrifies me I’ve got to do it because it’s in the unknown that all of your growth happens. It’s like with building muscle, you have to tear it to regrow it.”
When it came to approaching your characters, was there anything that helped you to find your way in or to unlock them?
Ann: “What Joy and the team did so excellently when they were casting, is that there is a tiny bit of all of us as actors in each of these characters. I could recognize parts of Farah that were in me and so I could start from that place of recognition, connecting to those parts of her, and then grow things from there. I’m like her, but I’m nothing like her at the same time. There’s a strength and an element of leadership that Farah has that I could recognize, but then there were other parts of her that were unfamiliar to me, and that’s where the work is.”
“It’s wonderful when you get the chance to do some work as an actor. Sometimes as women, as Black women, you don’t get great roles. You get roles, where if you’ve been in this game long enough, you can just turn up and say the words, you don’t have to find anybody. So when I get roles where I really have to do the work and figure it out it’s so exciting for me. With these roles, we absolutely had to figure it out.”
“What’s so great is that Joy didn’t just write two fully-formed, fleshed-out characters, she wrote a number of fully-formed, fleshed-out characters, which is rare. Sometimes it’s just the leads who are fleshed out and the supporting characters are only there to tell the story.”
Ronkę: “I think Joy herself is in each character as well. I always think about dating my friends in the sense that when you love your friends you want to serve them. You want to make sure that they feel the best version of themselves when they’re with you. So in learning about Joy, I realized that she was in all of these people who she’d written.”
“Years ago, in the very first iteration of the script, Joy cast me as Isio and we shot a proof of concept in Bermondsey. After that I got recast in a different role. At that time we did a workshop for about a week or so. Joy was only the writer at that point and we had a different director. In doing that workshop, Joy discovered that it was her story to tell as a director as well as a writer and she put me back in the role of Isio. By that stage I had got to see the world of the film and the character of Isio from a different perspective. I had got to see her as a different person from the outside as well as from the inside.”
“As an actor, the way I usually work is to figure out the character’s history and their internal dialogue and landscape. What I realized from that work was that Isio’s body was entirely different from mine. I had a lot of investigation and interrogation to do in regards to how her body told this story. So I went down the science route, because I’m really fascinated by neuroscience and physiology and biology and all that stuff. I was learning about the parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus nervous system, and the autonomic nervous system. All these different ways that your body tries to protect you when there is an external stimulus that means you have to alter your internal landscape.”
“What I learned from that was that Isio had lived in a fight or flight response for the majority of her life, to the extent where that was now her homeostasis, her balance. That meant that her movements were really quick and that she couldn’t quite focus on one thing and everybody around her felt dangerous. Isio constantly wanted to do the right thing because she believed that that would offer her some kind of release and would allow her to go back to a rest and digest state, when the body is calm. She wouldn’t have had this language, but for me, in order to protect Ronkę and to give Isio the room to exist in my body, I needed to go and learn all this stuff so that it was authentic storytelling.”
“It was only when we were actually working together that I realized that Farah and Ann’s gift of love actually affected where Isio held her shoulders. There’s a scene where we’re sat in between our beds in our room—it’s such an intimate setting—and there’s a moment where Isio’s shoulders drop. In my mind, that’s the first time in many years that she’s allowed herself to actually leave fight or flight, even just for a moment. Then they enter what we called the dream house, their shared vision of what their future life together outside of the centre could be like. Isio is actually now accessing the creative part of her brain, which you only get to do when you feel relaxed and safe. What’s amazing about the film’s storytelling is that we actually get to see them in that space and their body language is entirely different. They’re moving with long gestures. When they’re dancing, they’re looking at each other, they’re playing with each other’s hair. I’m getting goosebumps talking about it because it’s such thoughtful, layered storytelling.”
“When we were creating that dream house sequence, we had dance rehearsals with Zinzi Minott our incredible movement coordinator, which allowed us to explore what certain gestures meant, or if there was a touch of the face or a kiss to the shoulder, how our bodies responded to that. I really enjoyed indulging in that and getting to express everything in an environment where everyone on the crew was expressing themselves through their artistry too.”
“There’s one point in that sequence where they’re actually cleaning, which is a very domestic gesture as women, but there was so much love in it. When you imagine the height and peaks of your life, you never imagine doing the dishes! But that’s truth through storytelling, because now these characters aren’t just existing, this is their reality. In that moment, they actually transcend reality and go into a place of safety which is so beautiful. It’s actually one of my favourite parts of the film, I love it so much.”
There’s such tenderness and hope in Farah and Isio’s relationship, what did you enjoy about portraying that dynamic as it evolves and becomes romantic?
Ann: “I think it’s important to acknowledge that even when you are traumatized—or a traumatized person—that isn’t the state that you are in one hundred percent of the time. In and amongst trauma, can be joy, can be laughter, and, as the film shows, there can also be love. Not only are they in a traumatizing setting, but in and amongst that internal and external trauma, they find each other. Not just in the scenes where Farah and Isio are tender and gentle towards each and falling in love, but in the scenes where they’re laughing with their pals, when they’re cooking and dancing.”
“It’s about how you can be more than one thing. You can be traumatized, and… You can be someone who migrated from from extreme pressure, stress or danger, and also someone who meets friends and wants to paint or cook or fall in love or read a book. You’re not solely defined by this one thing that’s happened to you or that is happening to you. You’re not just defined by who you love and where you live. There’s everything else in between. What’s so special about this film is that there is the wider theme but then you get to see and experience all the nuances of being human.”
Ronkę: “Farah is a light. She’s like a lighthouse in this centre where we see a full ecosystem of humans. Isio comes in so focused, she’s like, ‘My main goal is to get out of here.’ But she’s literally put in a room with light. Isio is like, ‘I don’t know how to do this or if I want to do this’, but it warms her and she has to yield. Farah opens her up. Through the storytelling and the artistry—the cinematography, the production design, the costumes, the way that they painted the set—that’s beautifully reflected. We see this rigid polarity that Isio exists in, where things are either good, bad, right, or wrong, and then she discovers that there is also a middle. Like Ann said, it’s ‘trauma, and… .’ It’s about Isio yielding and opening up when she’s been so stiff and rigid. I think that’s also what we’re trying to offer our audiences. The idea of those polarities but then exploring the in between and seeing what you can find if you’re courageous enough to go there. I think Farah brings out that courage in Isio.”
Migrants are frequently dehumanized and demonized in the media and by politicians, how do you see Dreamers countering that kind of rhetoric?
Ann: “By showing that there is always more to the story. This film shows us there is more to it than just Isio ran away from Nigeria because she wanted to come to London where she’s working illegally. We see that there is always more to it than that. When we get to dissect and interrogate her story, when she’s having to bare her trauma, we realize that there is more to it than she wanted to be with a woman and wasn’t allowed to do that in Nigeria. It was that her mother put her through something that caused her to not be able to exist there anymore. She only had one option which brought her here. Then she comes here and is treated in such a way that she’s made to feel so wrong all the time, but what she did was right for her and necessary for own safety.”
“She finds herself in this removal centre and is treated like a criminal. Being able to go behind all of that—behind ‘She ran away from Nigeria’ or ‘She’s an immigrant from Nigeria’ or ‘These women are in these centres because they need to be sent home’—are these characters, Isio and Farah and their friends Atefeh and Nana and the reason why they are there. A lot of the conflict comes from a lack of willingness to know the reason why and this story gives us that and that’s so important.”
Ronkę: “In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ These politicians are actually causing themselves injustice because everything is interconnected. If we do not care for each other, if we’re not seeing the power of what it is to be human, then we’re actually doing self-detriment. I think it’s a gift to be able to highlight these women, to amplify them actually, in order for people to recognize that there is still a community, a collective of individuals, who are thrown to the wayside when someone has deemed them not worthy enough. But the question is, not worthy enough of what? Living freely, truthfully, authentically for self?”
“I think of trans people in this time and it really challenges me that we’re in a world where that kind of rhetoric can be so openly, so dangerously expelled from certain people. What I see is that actually it’s born from a self-hatred. If you don’t understand self, or that the injustice is actually born in you, that is why you need to portray in others. I think art offers us an opportunity to witness from a distance—because we’re not going through it ourselves—but amazing art allows our bodies to experience it and feel it and take from it and plant it somewhere in our subconscious. So next time when injustice rises, it could be the simplest thing like someone intentionally misusing somebody’s pronouns, for you to call it out and be like, ‘Hey, that’s an injustice. If you do that to them, you’re doing it to us and doing it to self and ultimately, we’re hurting humanity as a collective.'”
“If the foot is broken it affects the knee, it affects the hip and the whole body suffers. As humanity, we are one collective body, despite that very orange finger that we don’t like and we want to chop off. But we can’t chop him off because ultimately we need him, in the sense that seeing what he’s capable of doing and the things he’s capable of saying, actually gives us courage. It empowers us to create the art that not only allows others to be seen, but empowered, and then hopefully to be activated and engaged. We are the most powerful because we have art and on this metaphorical battlefield that I’m going off on, that is what we’re going to use to win. Because art it is immortal and that’s what we are as queer artists.”
By James Kleinmann
Dreamers received its world premiere at the 75th Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, and was in competition for the 39th Teddy Award.
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