“Black Panther” star Leticia Wright turns off any hint of glamour or “extrovert” in “Aisha,” a sublimely-understated drama of a young woman struggling with her past, her family obligations and “the system” as she tries to obtain emergency “self protection” status so that she can stay in Ireland.

She is living in a refugee hostel, working as a sympathetic hairdresser’s assistant, hoping her solicitor (Lorcan Cranitch) can deliver some good news about her efforts to make her move to Ireland permanent.

Something happened back in Benin City, and her mother back in Nigeria needs money. But even with a job, a lawyer and an ever-changing community of fellow immigrants who are shuffled in and out of the hostel as support, she can’t get her hopes up. And the unit director (Stuart Graham) is a stickler for rules and who doesn’t like back-talk when others lose their appeal and Aisha sticks up for them as they’re deported.

That could be trouble. The fact that she doesn’t trust the hostel’s “Halaal” certified meats also could get her labeled a trouble-maker.

But the new security guard (Josh O’Connor of “Challengers”) takes pity on her and lets her use the kitchen, after hours, to prep meals that conform to the tenets of her religion. .

As Aisha’s prospects dim, their bond grows stronger, although it may all come to naught if her “status” is denied.

Writer-director Frank Berry (“I Used to Live Here”) shows us his “homework” in one sequence of this “inspired by true” cases story. We and Aisha hear testimonials in conversation form from others residing at her hostel. The film makes it easy to sympathize with migrating people and their plights, but also appreciative of the lengths the EU — at least — has gone to treat people humanely and legally, providing them with legal counsel, housing them and propping them up until they get the chance to plead their cases.

Berry gives Wright and O’Connor some quietly wrenching moments, long interludes where Aisha is silently fighting back the tears and the guy who is sweet on her despite being unable to make eye contact struggles to say or do something to comfort her.

The script lets Wright hide her cards, not revealing everything about Aisha and her situation at once, letting us see the comfort of a new routine in an alien land, even if that “routine” is mere weeks or months old.

O’Connor is likably humble in the presence of this beautiful woman who has been tested in ways Conor could never imagine. But Conor the security guard has his “story,” too. Is she interested enough to let him tell it?

The stakes could not be more intimate and personal here, but as reassured as we might be that something like “due process” and “common sense” will prevail, Wright and O’Connor do a good job of playing people who aren’t so sure, whose faith in people — not the state — to show compassion has its limits.

The journey “Aisha” takes after the more perilous one our heroine undertook doesn’t cover a lot of ground. But Wright makes us, Aisha’s lawyer and Conor the security guard invest in this story and hope for an outcome out of step with our xephobic. immigrant-bashing times.

Rating: unrated, discussion of rape, other violence, smoking

Cast: Leticia Wright, Josh O’Connor, Stuart Graham, Lorcan Cranitch and Denis Conway

Credits: Scripted and directed by Frank Berry. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:31