Based on Richard Jeffries’ 1885 novel, After London is Ben Rivers’ first fully narrative feature. The film follows a young woman’s phantasmagorical journey across the the sparsely populated flooded plains of post-post-apocalyptic England. This is not a depressing and ravaged landscape, full of abandoned buildings and marauding gangs, rather, it is a landscape that has returned to an earlier glory: nature has reclaimed the land and forest has begun to dominate. Domesticated animals run wild. Knowledge of the past human civilisation is based on word-of-mouth stories passed down through the ages, which have become extremely warped. Although loosely based on a novel written over a century ago, After London seems to be perfectly in sync with some of the thoughts emerging around the environmental catastrophes playing out over recent years. It is a searingly powerful, fresh and evocative view of a future that now seems far more likely or possible. 

​​

MORE FROM BEN RIVERS AND JACQUI DAVIES

Ben Rivers, The Sky Trembles And The Earth Is Afraid And The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (2015)

A Distant Episode​ (2015)​

Slow Action (2011) Installation at Picture This and Matt's Gallery