London 1980s housing crisis film shown at festival

"When you do films on current issues you expect them to lose relevance. But it's sad that this production nearly 40 years later is still - or has become - even more eerily relevant."

"after the war euphoria was over and widespread socialism was beginning to crumble"

"Our economy came a bit more American after Margaret Thatcher. The society became more business and profit-making. Individualistic. There were people taking advantage of that."

"The ideology was to make people become owners and hence become more pro-establishment and have a stake in society. It became a free-for-all. Not dissimilar to now but for different reasons."

Hotel London follows a British Bangladeshi family made homeless in the mid-1980s as they confront unstable temporary housing, racism, and rising homelessness in London. The film was remastered by the British Film Institute and premiered at the London Film Festival. Filming took place on location in bed-and-breakfasts after months of research with homeless individuals and blends fiction with video activism. The story presents diverse B&B residents, including an Irish rough sleeper, and dramatizes the Thatcher-era shift toward Americanized, profit-driven economics, property speculation, and policies that intensified housing insecurity and displacement.

Read at www.bbc.com