All White in Barking by Marc Isaacs

The United Kingdom. Barking, East London. The borough is full of immigrants. Africans, Albanians, Poles, Lithuanians… people from all over the world. Yet there are still also some Englishmen living in this neighbourhood. How do they feel ? Actually, quite differently to one another.

Dave, an elderly Englishman, worries about the rising numbers of immigrants. He doesn’t want to meet them, even when he discovers that some of them are nice. He feels angry that all these foreign people make him feel like he is somewhere in Africa. But when he comes home… he lovingly cuddles his half black grandson.

Sue knows that her neighbours are from Albania, but she has no idea where this country is on the map. She and her husband would probably like to know their foreign neighbours better - they seem to be quite a sympathetic couple – but Sue doesn’t know how to make the first step. So, the director of the film pushes her and her husband into accepting an invitation to go round for dinner next door. Monty, a Jew who immigrated to Britain many years ago, is the one who really doesn’t care about skin colour. He’s even in a relationship with an African woman.

These people are probably all very familiar with the accepted wisdom that skin colour doesn’t really matter and that the most important is the personality and the soul… But some of them obviously haven’t quite taken it to heart. They still see the difference between white and black based on questions like eating certain kinds of meat. Ridiculous, isn’t it ? For Nigerian Dickson it seems to be so - is he doing something wrong just by living next door, raising his children and paying taxes just like Englishmen do ?

Hanna Mironenko