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‘Hope Is Political’
Ken Loach on the end of his 60-year filmmaking career and what he’s learned about power and the working class.
Whether he’s telling the story of a poor father trying to buy his daughter a communion dress ( Raining Stones), a struggling single mother and an ex-carpenter recovering from a heart attack ( I, Daniel Blake), or violent men finding peace through honest work ( The Angels’ Share), the point of view is always ground level, rooted in everyday details and conundrums. He delved into the lingering effects of Margaret Thatcher on the United Kingdom’s economy, the shattered dreams of the New Left, the difficulty of building workers’ coalitions, and the reason why he never puts a camera anywhere that a person wouldn’t be. Even when your films include actors that some moviegoers know, like Frances McDormand and Brian Cox in the legal thriller Hidden Agenda, or Cillian Murphy in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, they’re not stars — at least not at the moment when they’re working with you.
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