Pressure is a 1976 British drama film directed by Horace Ové and starring Herbert Norville, Oscar James and Frank Singuineau.

Co-written by Ové with Samuel Selvon,[2] it is hailed as the UK's first Black dramatic feature-length film,[3][4][5] and has been characterised as "a gritty and dynamic study of a generation in crisis".

According to Julia Toppin, Pressure is a product of its time, but the issues and themes it explores remain relevant to the black experience in Britain today, including the cycle of educational deprivation, poverty, unemployment and antisocial behaviour.

...Pressure remains a key Black British film, which helps to demonstrate how modern multi-cultural Britain was shaped.

[9]Ové said in a December 1987 interview for Monthly Film Bulletin: "When things happen here, like Broadwater Farm or the Brixton riots, I get very annoyed with the media coverage.

[13] Horace Ové’s Pressure stands out for its deliberate blending of realism with constructed cinematic techniques, creating a film that is both authentic and symbolically charged.

As James S. Williams discusses, Ové employed unconventional methods to heighten the film’s emotional impact and reinforce its social commentary.

Another powerful example is the church scene featuring actor Norman Beaton as a preacher delivering a sermon that incorporates shockingly racist rhetoric about cleansing oneself of “blackness.” This was filmed during an actual church service with a Black congregation, heightening the emotional stakes and forcing both the characters and the audience to confront internalized and systemic racism head-on.

The opening sequence juxtaposes faded, nostalgic photographs of the Caribbean with stark black-and-white illustrations of the harsh realities faced by Windrush immigrants upon arriving in Britain.

[15][16] It also featured the following month in a retrospective at the BFI Southbank of the work of Horace Ové (who died in September 2023), when Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian about Pressure: "It has the punchy quality of a 21st-century graphic novel, eagerly tackling Black Power and social realism, mixing comedy, tragedy and irony....The film's reappearance may be a madeleine for the 70s, but it's also a reminder that the pressure Britain's black communities have withstood hasn't subsided.