London River

London River (2009) is a drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Rachid Bouchareb. Shot in both French and English, it follows two strangers who arrive in London separately after the 7 July 2005 bombings — each looking for a missing child.

Elisabeth (Brenda Blethyn), an English countrywoman, and Ousmane (Sotigui Kouyaté), a Guinean Muslim from Paris, have nothing obvious in common and no particular wish to share the search. What ties them — that their children had been living together, and neither parent had known — forces a slow, awkward recognition across every difference of background and faith between them.

Kouyaté took Best Actor in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2009: a performance built almost entirely on stillness. Blethyn, usually warmer, plays Elisabeth at an angle that keeps shifting. Bouchareb does not use the attacks as spectacle — the city is already moving on, and grief fills the silences. Stream London River (2009) online on iFILM.