Details

Stephen Frears was at the forefront of the British cinematic revival of the mid-1980s, and the delightfully transgressive My Beautiful Laundrette is his greatest triumph of the period.

Working from a richly layered script by Hanif Kureishi, who was soon to be an internationally renowned writer, Frears tells an uncommon love story that takes place between a young South London Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke), who decides to open an upscale laundromat to make his family proud, and his childhood friend, a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis, in a breakthrough role) who volunteers to help make his dream a reality.

This culture-clash comedy is also a subversive work of social realism that dares to address racism, homophobia, and sociopolitical marginalisation in Margaret Thatcher's England.

With a new and restored 2K digital transfer supervised by director of photography Oliver Stapleton, My Beautiful Laundrette is given the Criterion treatment and released on Blu-ray 18th May 2026 from Spirit Entertainment.

Special Features

  • New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Oliver Stapleton, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New conversation between director Stephen Frears and producer Colin MacCabe
  • New interviews with writer Hanif Kureishi, producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe, and Stapleton
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • An essay by critic Graham Fuller