Ken Loach
5 titles · european arthouse
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.
fit
Lineage
Earlier films these works draw on, and the films they went on to shape — each link checked to name a film that actually came first.