Ken Loach

A Barnsley schoolboy with nothing going for him trains a kestrel, and Kes lets you know early that the bird will not save him. Fifty years of films have kept the same method and the same subject: working people ground down by an institution, played by actors who often have not acted, shot plainly on location with the camera at a distance. I, Daniel Blake sends a joiner recovering from a heart attack into the benefits system and follows the paperwork.

Signature

• Non-professional casts and improvised, regionally specific speech.
• Plain observational camera, natural light, no score to speak of.
• An institution as the antagonist: the benefits office, the employer, the state.
• Endings that decline to rescue anyone.