London Film Festival (LFF) 2025 ‘Hotel London’ – Fight The Power
Full review of one of the South Asian films at this year’s edition
HOUSING remains a critical issue in contemporary Britain and so a remastered 4K digital print of the 1987, ‘Hotel London’ is timely and valuable.
At just under an hour, it is eminently watchable, has moments of humour, much humanity, poignancy and depth.
It isn’t just an activist intervention type film – even for its time and supported as it was, by several leading housing charities.
Writer-director Ahmed Jamal weaves a strong and simple tale about a British Bangladeshi family made homeless in the mid-1980s.
Among the cast is star Jonathan Pryce who plays a homeless Irishman with mental health issues and whom the main Asian male lead will encounter.
Margaret Thatcher is in power and “greed is good” – and so developers have no social restraints – they roam the city, like big fat cats, looking for properties they can devour and then develop – Jamal has a few in the film, who almost lick their lips when viewing some old buildings that house human beings and is their only shelter. You get the picture…
On the other side, you have an Asian family of three – Dad Ullah (Aftab Sachek) and his wife Mrs Ullah (Alpana Sengupta) and their son who is about seven or eight and is going to school.
The film starts with their home being repossessed – they haven’t been able to keep up with the mortgage payments. It isn’t clear exactly what Sachek’s character does but there was a lot of redundancy and unemployment at the time, as Britain’s industrial age was coming to an abrupt end.
Homeless, the family are put into temporary housing – it isn’t of a high quality but it is all the council can do – much of the film is set around Camden and central London.
At the hostel, they meet seedy housing manager (Adrian McLoughlin) who thinks nothing of asking vulnerable women whether they can ‘satisfy’ him for some perks and no bother from him, while they remain there. He even tries it on with Mrs Ullah and there is a wonderful and comic rebuke from Sengupta’s character.
The family relationships are all under strain – the family of three live in one room and there are only two beds – the child and the mother in one and Dad alone in the other. During the course of the film, this will change, as husband and wife show tenderness and empathy towards each other and let go of the tensions and frustrations they both feel.
Sachek also finds friendship with Pryce’s character Sean – they go on a jaunt to central London, eat leftovers from a fancy restaurant and then Pryce takes a jig in the busy London traffic and laughs about it.
There is a decent story arc and the characters work for the time they are given together – a little more backstory would have perhaps helped but the family’s unfortunate plight remains front, centre and back, as it should.
Jamal is still making films and this was one of the first productions from a unique collective at the time – Britain’s first formal grouping of Asian and Black filmmakers, known as Retake. They have paved the way for Britain’s Asian and Black filmmakers of today.
All in all, this is well worth your time – it also covers the racism of the time – we think things have improved on one level – but the current furore over people arriving in small boats from France has sent us hurtling back in time – and so this film shows that only through collective strength and a commitment to fighting discrimination wherever it rears its ugly head, can we consolidate and build on progress when it is made.
This is good enough reason to watch ‘Hotel London’ if you get the chance; it will also act again as a clarion call for all those fighting to provide permanent homes for all and counter racism, however subtly or casually it occurs.
There is also a wonderful jazzy score too by Keith Waite – which helps to elevate the film’s overall aesthetics and hints at something classy and sophisticated, despite the very gritty subject matter.
Few films are being made about this subject and so it is great to see the BFI remaster and platform this at London Film Festival.
ACV rating: **** (out of five)
‘Hotel London’ screens in the Experimenta strand at LFF on Thursday, October 16 – at the ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
ICA – https://www.ica.art/films/lff-hotel-london
See our interview with Ahmed Jamal at the BFI launch
Other LFF reviews – Day 3 update – Wicked director, Jon M Chu; Moss & Freud
Other reviews soon…keep it locked with us!
