As Ken Loach announces his retirement from directing after six decades of intense productivity, we dedicate a retrospective to his work, which is widely celebrated for its daring, uncompromising portraits of poverty and marginalisation in the United Kingdom. After starting his career at the BBC in the 1960s, with docudramas that caused scandals and put issues back on the political agenda, he rapidly cemented his position as a “filmmaker of the left”, bringing to light the daily lives of communities struggling under political, social and economic inequality. The films he would go on to direct for the cinema fall under the banner of social realism, at times acting as biting critiques of capitalism, at others reflecting on the question of identity in his home country.
His films, many of them in partnership with screenwriter Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O'Brien, have been awarded multiple times at film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam and Venice.
Between September and November, we will be showing ten more of the filmmaker’s feature films, made between the late 1990s and last year, including two of the Cannes Palme d'Or winners: The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016).

Curated by Gareth Evans