Synopsis
After traveling to London to check on their missing children in the wake of the 2005 terror attacks on the city, two strangers come to discover their respective children had been living together at the time of the attacks
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Cast
- Brenda BlethynElisabeth
- Sotigui KouyatéOusmane
- Sami BouajilaImam
- Roschdy ZemLe Boucher
- Francis MageeInspecteur anglais
- Bernard BlancanOuvrier Forestier
- Marc BaylisEdward
- Gareth RandallPasteur
- Aurélie EltvedtGuide Chapelle
- Mathieu SchiffmanInspecteur anglais
Recommendations
- 80
Empire
An insight-filled take on prejudice in post-11/7 London that packs a hefty punch. - 80
Los Angeles Times
Blethyn brings tremendous empathy to the introspective, determined Elisabeth, while the tall, gaunt and dreadlocked Ousmane fleshes out his less-dimensional role with a haunting sadness that speaks volumes. - 80
Time Out
It's a credit to both the actors and Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory) that the film never dives headfirst into mawkishness. - 75
Slant Magazine
Rachid Bouchareb casts his account of the horrifying aftermath of tragedy on an intimate scale, allowing the halting words and frightened faces of his two leads to tell us as much as we need to know about the uncertainties of those faced with tracking down their lost loved ones. - 75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Here, in orderly fiction, the reverberations bring about the alignment of cultures, the meeting of minds and the comforting assertion that "our lives aren't that different." Maybe so, and the film deserves full marks for trying, at times movingly, to convince us. In the end, the argument is a little too neat to accept, but far too poignant to ignore. - 70
Village Voice
Director Rachid Bouchareb brings a measured hand to this intimate, occasionally overdetermined sketch of the aloneness at the center of our global confluence. - 67
IndieWire
Can actors save a mediocre movie? In London River, they come close. Blethyn's frantic, sad naivete creates a fascinating contrast to Kouyaté's understated performance. - 60
New York Daily News
The script, co-written by Bouchareb, is regrettably simplistic. But Blethyn and Kouyaté inhabit and expand the film's earnestly instructive intentions, leaving us with a deeply-felt experience rather than a naively-sketched lesson.
