London in London River

London in London River

The principal location of London River (Rachid Bouchareb 2009) is the flat above the El Baraka butcher's at 48 Blackstock Road, N.4, where the protagonists' missing children lived:

The Finsbury Park end of the street, from the corner of Ambler Road to the junction with Seven Sisters Road, is shown from several different angles and at different times of the day:

Ousmane stays at the hotel on Wightman Road:

The most significant location is the footbridge that crosses the railway lines at Harringay station:

This is how Carrie Tarr reads the footbridge, in her essay on the 'Mediation of Difference in London River':

The realist function served by the footbridge is somewhat limited, firstly by what seems to me the high unlikelihood that it would have become a place where would be put up photographs of those missing after the 7/7 attacks, and secondly by the fact that it is not on the direct route between Ousmane's hotel and Jane's flat (A and B respectively on the map below). Elizabeth takes the footbridge when she goes to and from the hotel. and later Ousmane takes it to reach the flat, but the direct route is the middle one, through Finsbury Park:

It may be that Elizabeth would want to avoid crossing the park. The route to the left is via the footbridge then Quernmore Road, Stapleton Hall Road, Oakfield Road, Endymion Road, Upper Tollington Park, Florence Road, Woodstock Road, Stroud Green Road, across Seven Sisters Road to Blackstock Road. This would appear to be shorter than that to the right, but is far too complicated for someone unfamiliar with the area to take. Elizabeth would almost certainly take the route to the right, along Seven Sisters Road, Green Lanes and up Burgoyne Road to the hotel. Nature-loving Ousmane would almost certainly cross the park. We later see him in there, examining its trees:

Later Ousmane and Elizabeth walk together in Finsbury Park:

Stairs from the footbridge lead down to the platforms of Harringay station. This, we are to understand, is the train that brings Ousmane to Harringay:

The canal called the New River that Tarr refers to here is seen when Ousmane heads to the mosque and later when he is in conversation with someone from the mosque:

This is what Tarr says of the New River canal:

The place visited by Ousmane and later Elizabeth is the London Islamic Cultural Centre, next to the Wightman Road Mosque. Ousmane could have walked straight up Wightman Road from his hotel to get here, but instead he takes the more picturesque route along the New River Path.

Elizabeth asks about her daughter at a hairdresser's on Wightman Road, a little to the north of the mosque:

Scratch Hair Salon, 292 Wightman Road N.8

The local police station is on Tottenham Lane in Hornsey:

The man from the mosque takes Ousmane to where his son used to live, at 16 Somerfield Road, N.4., very close to the Blackstock Road flat:

Somefield Road becomes Ambler Road when it crosses Blackstock Road. Both Ousmane and Elizabeth shop in Arsenal Food and Wine, on the corner of Ambler Road and Blackstock Road:

Two bus rides along Seven Sisters Road approach the junction of Green Lanes at Manor House:

The taxi that brings Elizabeth to Blackstock Road turns from Crouch Hill into Stroud Green Road. Since the taxi is then shown to have come up Blackstock Road from the south, when Stroud Green Road is to the north, this doesn't seem like the right route from any central London station at which she may have arrived. It does, though, allow a glimpse of the picturesque Old Dairy on Crouch Hill:

This view from inside the taxi is the our and Elizabeth's first view of North London. It is matched at the end of the film by the views from inside the police car that takes Elizabeth and Ousmane to Hornsey Police Station, where they learn of their children's death. This journey is shown in five shots over 18 seconds, linked by dissolves. Four are view of Green Lanes, looking left as the car drives north, interrupted by a view of the Seven Sisters Road: