GUESTS
2024 · 14m · UK
Directed by Timi Akindele-Ajani
Genres: drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, tense
In 1972 London, a Nigerian woman hosts a dinner for her husband's English colleague, hoping to secure a job.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
1972 London, Nigerian woman hosts husband's English colleague hoping for a job — reframing racism through anticipatory labor is genuinely a fresh angle, not just a logline. BFI knows what it's doing here.
Akindele-Ajani reframing 1972 London racism through the anticipatory labour of the Nigerian hosts rather than the perpetrator's gaze is the Steve McQueen / Amma Asante move done at BFI Network scale. The structural reframing is the formal achievement.
14:27 BFI Network-funded dinner-party drama with serious below-the-line craft (DP Stephen James Dunn, editor Lorene Dewett) — reframing 1972 London racism through the hosts' anticipatory labor is a precise dramaturgical choice that the production design has to render textbook-accurate.