Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes
Winner Outstanding British Film at the British Academy Film Awards
Official book for Palme d’Or winning film, I, Daniel Blake.
Daniel Blake, 59, has worked as a joiner most of his life in Newcastle. Now, after a heart attack and nearly falling from a scaffold, he needs help from the State for the first time in his life. He crosses paths with a single mother, Katie, and her two young children, Daisy and Dylan. Katie’s only chance to escape a one-roomed homeless hostel in London has been to accept a flat in a city she doesn’t know some 300 miles away.
Daniel and Katie find themselves in no-man’s land caught on the barbed wire of welfare bureaucracy as played out against the rhetoric of ‘striver and skiver’ in modern day Britain.
Features original screenplay, photos from the film and production notes from cast and crew, including Paul Laverty, Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien.
Paperback.
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Ken Loach’s latest Palme d’Or winner, his second after 2006’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley, packs a hefty punch, both personal and political. On one level, it is a polemical indictment of a faceless benefits bureaucracy that strips claimants of their humanity by reducing them to mere numbers – neoliberal 1984 meets uncaring, capitalist Catch-22. On another, it is a celebration of the decency and kinship of (extra)ordinary people who look out for each other when the state abandons its duty of care.
Paul Laverty was born in Calcutta, India, to an Irish mother and Scottish father. He obtained a Philosophy degree at the Gregorian University in Rome. Thereafter he obtained a law degree at Strathclyde Law School, in Glasgow. During the mid-eighties worked for a Nicaraguan domestic human rights organisation.
He has written the screenplays for several full length feature films directed by Ken Loach: including Sweet Sixteen (2002) – winner of Best Original Screenplay at Cannes, The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) – winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and It’s A Free World (2007) – winner of Best Original Screenplay at Venice Film Festival. He is married to Spanish filmmaker Icíar Bollaín, with whom he has made a number of feature films.
Books: Looking For Eric, Route Irish, The Angels' Share, Jimmy's Hall, I, Daniel Blake, Sorry We Missed You, The Old Oak, Even The Rain
Ken Loach was born in 1936 in Nuneaton. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and went on to study law at St. Peter’s Hall, Oxford. After a brief spell in the theatre, Loach was recruited by the BBC in 1963 as a television director. This launched a long career directing films for television and the cinema, from Cathy Come Home and Kes in the sixties to Land And Freedom, Sweet Sixteen and I, Daniel Blake in recent years.
Books: Looking For Eric, Route Irish, The Angels' Share, Jimmy's Hall, I, Daniel Blake, Sorry We Missed You, The Old Oak
Rebecca O’Brien is a film producer who has worked with director Ken Loach since Hidden Agenda in 1990. She is a partner with Ken Loach and Paul Laverty in the production company Sixteen Films.
Books: Looking For Eric, Route Irish, The Angels' Share, Jimmy's Hall, I, Daniel Blake, Sorry We Missed You, THe Old Oak
Rebecca O’Brien, Paul Laverty, Ken Loach
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Rebecca O’Brien, Paul Laverty, Ken Loach
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