Movie Description
Babylon is a 1980 British drama film directed by Franco Rosso. Written by Franco Rosso and Martin Stellman (Quadrophenia), and shot by two-time Academy Award winner Chris Menges (The Killing Fields), Babylon is an incendiary portrait of racial tension and police brutality set in Brixton, London. The film, anchored by Dennis Bovell’s propulsive score, is partly based on Bovell’s false imprisonment for running a Jamaican sound system, Sufferer’s Hi Fi, in the mid-70s.
Produced by Gavrik Losey and the National Film Finance Corporation, the film is regarded as a classic.
Babylon received praise from critics both at its original 1980 release and 2019 U.S. release. Many praised its representation of Black youth life in South London during the Thatcher-era. Wesley Morris of The New York Times chose the film as a critic's pick, claiming the film "still feels new… You’re looking at people who, in 1980 England, were, at last, being properly, seriously seen.†Hua Hsu of The New Yorker noted how "few films portray this moment in black British life quite like Franco Rosso’s Babylon".
The film also received acclaim for its themes of racial violence and police brutality. Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times called the film "assertive and ebullient... alive as a movie can be". Jaya Saxena of GQ describes Blue's journey as "a story with literally epic stakes".