“It would be difficult to overstate how successful Tonia Mishiali’s conception of this project is.”

As Stella delivers a candle-laden birthday cake in celebration of Mariama’s eighteenth birthday, at the shelter where Stella has been working for a handful of weeks, there is no way that either woman could foresee how consequential they will become to each other’s lives. Stella, a Cypriot recovering addict and retired sex worker, and Mariama, a Senegalese asylum seeker, are both facing housing insecurities, though their situations differ greatly. After the shelter is no longer able to accommodate her, Mariama is forced to sleep just outside it, until she is told that she must relocate. Meanwhile, Stella has an apartment that she shares with roommates, but she is looking for a place of her own: she has lost custody of her young daughter and is trying to meet the requirements so they can be reunited. When she asks for a reference from her employer at the shelter, Stella is told that she needs to pass a drug test. Given that she still occasionally uses, this sends her into a state of panic.

Mariama’s proximity offers a potential solution to Stella’s problem, at least in her mind: perhaps she can pass off Mariama’s urine as her own. This does, however, mean that she must wait until Mariama has gone through her period. She allows Mariama to stay with her until she can produce blood-free urine, and though Stella attempts to keep herself at an emotional distance, before long she is won over by Mariama’s charm and expressions of gratitude, and finds it difficult to maintain her cautious hostility. Both women find themselves needing employment: Mariama, looking for any job at all, finds work in a butcher shop that is open to undocumented hires; Stella, unable to find a vocation with better pay, returns to her previous pimp. He is unwilling to lend her money, but successfully tempts her to the point of agreeing to one last job (regular clients still request her services). Though Mariama and Stella’s perspectives, values, and goals are not always perfectly aligned, they become inseparable and cultivate a bond that at times is reminiscent of a mother-daughter relationship, and at other times feels sisterly. But no matter what shape their relationship takes, it is clear that neither is ready to be fully independent, and they are going to be very important to each other moving forward.

It would be difficult to overstate how successful director Tonia Mishiali’s conception of this project is. The attention to detail in what she reveals about Stella and Mariama’s lives feels well-researched, sensitive, thoughtful, emotionally intuitive and plausibly realistic, and the palpable sincerity, interest, and care for both of her characters makes the work she has put into this film look so much easier than it must have been. Mariama and Stella are both interesting enough to deserve films of their own, and in isolation each could work as an individual character study. This is largely thanks to the equal treatment and interest Mishiali takes in both women.

Mishiali’s study of Mariama shows how nimble, sharp, and persistent asylum seekers must be in order to quickly come up with solutions on the fly. When Mariama is asked for proof of address via a lease agreement (while she is still unhoused) in order to open a bank account, she is able to leapfrog this potential roadblock with an emphatic suggestion to the bank employee that the application be forwarded until she brings the agreement. Later, her eventual employer at the butcher shop offers her a measly 1.5 euros per hour, a great reminder of how employers take advantage of refugees who have no other choice than to settle for gruelling work that feels adjacent to slave labour; Mariama has the confidence and nerve to haggle for 2.5. And one detail (that most directors would overlook but Mishiali doesn’t miss) comes in a very early scene where Mariama sneaks a metal fork into a disposable plastic bag containing her paltry possessions. The inclusion of the fork and the plastic bag show just how little she has, and how even the most trivial items are still more than what is available to Mariama at this point.

The consideration of Stella’s plight is just as worthy as Mariama’s. Addiction and sex work can have a circular relationship: using can lead to sex work; sex work can lead to drug use as a coping strategy, which makes this a cycle that is nearly impossible to break. And while there has been a wonderful cultural re-evaluation of how sex workers are unfairly and ignorantly stigmatised, Mishiali’s depiction of how Stella is treated by her pimp shows the stress, humiliation, and dehumanization that Stella feels, an important reminder that sex work is only empowering when the worker is in control of setting their terms. Given that we have seen how difficult it is for Stella to keep her ahead above water financially while committed to following the straight and narrow, we can understand why she would seriously consider “one last job,” when a single gig makes her the same amount of money as hours and hours of soul-crushing menial work.

Ultimately, the stunning fusion of these two women’s already insightful and compelling stories is what carries this feature to another level. Differences in age, race, cultural background and personal history lend each of their stories specificity, but the time spent with these women in their shared scenes shows the similar difficulties of trying to start a fresh life. In so many ways, society has failed them, and while neither has the power to completely solve the other’s problems (let alone their own), destiny has crossed their paths so that they may teach themselves how to lean on each other for support.