https://vimeo.com/605780461
Film ticket includes Q&A with Director Sonita Gale.
Hostile explores the UK’s complicated relationship with the migrant communities that form the backbone of our society. Through their eyes, we look at the history and the impact of the government’s evolving “Hostile Environment” policies, which target migrants and raise the question of what it means to be British today.
Review: Sonita Gale’s stark and unapologetic documentary is an uncomfortable and necessary exploration into the UK government’s treatment of some of the most marginalised and vulnerable members of its society.
Focusing on a sequence of real-time events and interviews conducted during the height of COVID-19, Hostile investigates the exhaustingly labyrinthian visa system, alongside the callous NRPF (“No Recourse to Public Funds”) policy, as we follow the journey of several individuals who must struggle to simply exist within a system that was designed to reject them.
Gale’s documentary uncovers the fragility of immigrant living, which lies in outrageous antithesis to the reliance the UK places on immigration workers, many of whom were forced into destitution by unrelenting refusals of support from the government during the pandemic. Hostile explores the historic alienation of the globally precarious and the vulnerable, backed up by poignant lyrics from George the Poet.
Directed by Sonita Gale and executive-produced by award-winning musician Nitin Sawhney, Hostile is a powerfully executed directorial debut. It explores the pain of what it means to say that somewhere is your home, only to be told in response that no, it is not.
Bryony Chellew
