Pressure

In 1975, the Trinidad-born filmmaker Horace Ové (1936-2023) became the first Black director to make a feature-length film in the UK. With funding from the BFI, he directed PRESSURE in a neo-realist style in the West London neighborhood of Ladbroke Grove. The plot follows the 16-year-old Londoner Tony (Herbert Norville) as he tries to find his place in society. As a school leaver looking for work, he is confronted with the conservative lifestyle of his religious parents from Trinidad, his brother's Black Power politics and ideology, and the racist prejudices of British society. Ové illustrates impressively the dilemmas of the children of the Windrush generation, who searched for their own identities between the lack of acceptance in their home country and their parents' dreams of the Caribbean homeland. (German premiere of the 4K restoration by the BFI National Archive and the Film Foundation).