All the South London filming locations you can visit from ‘Rye Lane’

Fittingly, ‘Rye Lane’ opens outside Peckham Rye station, as if the audience had just stepped off the train – though they might not recognise it at first. It’s here, in the back of Coal Rooms, that we first encounter a weeping, heartbroken Dom – on the loo. ‘The loos in the Coal Rooms – ya gotta go,’ says Raine, extolling the station’s former ticket office and waiting room turned bar and restaurant. ‘They do a really good roast, but the loos are gorgeous.’ Keen-eyed Londoners might also notice a familiar scrawl next to the grieving leading man: ‘Nat Has Herpes’, a cornerstone of capital living, is tagged on the cubicle wall – a manifestation of Raine’s own immature sense of humour, she says.

It’s not the only Easter egg the director snuck in for the locals. The whole film is a ‘love letter to those silly moments’ you experience in London, she explains. There are obnoxious kids making noise on their micro-scooters; topless men shouting out of apartment windows next to Peckham’s Warwick Gardens; and of course, there’s a cowboy doing the moonwalk in Rye Lane Market. 

‘That just happens in London, right?’ Raine says. ‘You walk around and there’s just a guy doing something strange, and everyone walks past like [it’s not happening]. There’ll be a guy with a shopping bag and AirPods and he’ll take one look and then carry on talking – no one’s fazed!’

Another South London culinary institution features via flashback. In a memorable vignette, Dom enjoys a candlelit dinner with his ex at Morley’s – the cult chicken-shop chain deep-fried in nostalgia for Raine, who recalls how her classmates would flock there after school. 

‘We were in the most “Morley’s” Morley’s ever, and it was so funny shooting there. People were genuinely knocking on the window because they wanted chicken. They were outraged that it was closed.’ Incidentally, Raine’s date night order is straight to the point: ‘Three fried chicken legs with chips. Simple. Perfect.’

Raine highlights some of the film’s other key locations, like the Ebony Horse Club and the rustic Il Giardino restaurant. It was essential to the film that it promote local businesses, she says, describing the latter as a place ‘full of soul’. A few doors down, the whistlestop tour continues in ‘Rye Lane’ via hotspots like the goods emporium Khan’s Bargains and Persepolis Persian grocery.

A nearby ornamental garden, meanwhile, provides respite from the store fronts, fast food joints, and busy urban areas. ‘I love Brockwell Park,’ Raine says, ‘I was a member of the Lido. And that’s just a really pretty part of it. It feels art-directed, even though it’s a park – it’s not just a big flat green area.’

It’s also apparently well-regarded for its wildlife. ‘I walked up at about 6am on the morning of the shoot – and my uncle was just sitting there with his bike, on the bench. He’d managed to get past security in full cycling gear. I said: “Uncle Terrance, what the hell are you doing here” and he just said, “I’ve come to visit my squirrel. I’ve got a squirrel here that I really like.”’

One location particularly close to home is Nour Cash & Carry, where the director’s grandma would take her to buy Jamaican seasoning when she moved to Brixton as a child. In ‘Rye Lane’, a scene shot at the groceries store features a cameo from South London actor-comedian Michael Dapaah, who appears as Dom and Yas pop in to buy a couple of Supermalts. 

‘It’s total chaos in there,’ Raine says of the Brixton institution, ‘but it was important for me to capture it, as unfortunately the area’s changing really rapidly. It’s kind of scary, but if it’s going to happen then at least this film can be a sort of time capsule.’

Having recently made a splash at Sundance and Glasgow film festivals, and with the film shortly in cinemas, it seems fitting to end with two cineplexes prominent in ‘Rye Lane’: 

‘I love The Ritzy,’ says Raine, describing the ‘trendy and traditional’ Picturehouse cinema next to the Bovril signage in Windrush Square. It was a local haunt for Raine and her dad when they lived just off Brixton Hill – and its ornate interior shows up in the film in a scene where Dom sobs into his popcorn. 

On the other hand, there’s an equally worthy film theatre just down the road. ‘Peckhamplex is beautiful and colourful, but it’s iconic because it’s cheap,’ says Raine of SE15’s fiver-a-ticket indie multiplex. Due to COVID restrictions, Raine and her crew could only access it towards the end of the shoot. ‘It was really important to me to hero that cinema,’ she says. ‘It’s so bloody expensive to go to the cinema [elsewhere], so I really wanted to celebrate it.’

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