Pressure
Horace Ové’s fiction-film debut marks a watershed in the history of British cinema: the nation’s first feature to be written and directed by a Black filmmaker and the first to focus on the perspective of Black characters. Suffused with the political outrage and explosive rebellion of 1970s London, Pressure (1975, NR) is a marvel of lived-in independent filmmaking that captures Black working-class solidarity while refusing easy solutions to social problems—like income disparity, juvenile delinquency, racial profiling—that remain relevant today.
