Director

Ken Loach

United Kingdom, France, Belgium | 2019 | 100 min | English with subtitles in English and Arabic

• Producer Rebecca O'Brien
• Production Company Sixteen Films, BBC Films, BFI, Les Films du Fleuve, Why Not Productions, France 2 Cinéma
• Screenplay Paul Laverty
• Cinematography Robbie Ryan
• Editing Jonathan Morris
• Sound Kevin Brazier
• Cast Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor
• Contacts

  Teleview International

  ziadc@teleview-int.tv

About the Film

Once again, Ken Loach points his relentless, fierce, magnifying lens on a vital contemporary issue: working conditions in places where, under the tag of a fake independence—“You do not work for us,” says the boss, “you work with us.”—the exploitation of people is as close as it can get to a form of slavery in our modern society. As in all of Loach’s best work, the strong, grounded, naturalistic performances prevent the film from becoming overly didactic, ensuring that it succeeds as a stirring, plausible and relevant drama about decent people trying to do the best for themselves, but being defeated by a system in which “everything is out of whack.”

Set in Newcastle, the film centers on Ricky—a jobless laborer who hopes that becoming ‘his own boss’ as a freelance delivery driver working ‘with’ a franchise company will finally give financial stability to the family, and even enable them to purchase their own home— and Abby, a carer for the elderly, who agrees to sell her car so that Ricky can buy his own van. They are proud of their bright kids—15-year-old Seb and 10-year-old Liza Jane—and prepared to work long hours to give them the opportunities they never had. The family unit is strong, but when both are pulled in different directions, everything comes to breaking point.

Teresa Cavina