Director’s latest film’s all about the quest for hope
Ken Loach has talked about the “very good people” helping to look after Syrian refugees, which is the subject of his latest film.
The Old Oak is a story of two traumatised communities thrown together when a group of Syrian refugees are housed in a neglected former mining village in the North East of England.
In an interview with The Big Issue magazine, the Bath-based film director said the story was infused with hope, as common ground is found between a community of refugees fleeing war and a local area decimated by “decades of government neglect”.
He said: “It’s about the struggle of hope to emerge, isn’t it, and the struggle of people to see hope.
“We couldn’t be in a more disastrous situation with civil society collapsing around us, health, education, homelessness, housing, student debt, poverty and hunger used as a weapon, transport collapsing.
“Every aspect of our life is collapsing, with the added danger from climate disaster.
“So, where you find hope in all that is the big question. But the hope has to be in people’s determination to resist and our instinct, and I think it is an instinct, for solidarity.”
The Old Oak completes a trilogy of films set in the North East, tackling the biggest issues in society, each written by regular collaborator Paul Laverty. In 2016, the pair shone a spotlight on benefits sanctions and the desperation fuelling the expansion of food banks in I, Daniel Blake. Two years later, with Loach now into his 80s, Sorry We
Missed You highlighted the impact of the gig economy and its effect on workers’ rights.
Loach added: “We felt we needed to tell a third story, centred in the old mining communities. Because the whole area was coal mining,
shipbuilding and steel, and all the old industry is gone.
“So what are the consequences for ordinary people? The consequences are that the old mining communities are left abandoned with nothing. So how do we reveal that in a way that also sheds light on the dangerous swing to the right?
“What happened was that groups of refugees from the Syrian war were placed in these old mining areas by the Government without much preparation.
“Now it is much better and there are very good people that help look after refugees from Syria.
“But refugees from a war zone are placed in these desolate communities that were abandoned
with little hope – how can they coexist?
“Where can we find hope in all that? That was the key question.”
Loach, who has been directing since the 1960s, is renowned for films exploring society’s underbelly. His film Kes (1969) was voted the seventh greatest British film of the 20th century in a poll by the British Film Institute. Two of his films, The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016), received the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival, making him one of only nine filmmakers to win the award twice. Loach also holds the record for most films in the main competition at Cannes, with 15 films. The Old Oak is in cinemas from the end of the month.