Wednesday September 20th 2017
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UK  2016  100 minutes
Director: Ken Loach
Starring: Dave Johns, Hayley Squires

Fifty years ago Ken Loach pricked the nation’s conscience about homelessness with Cathy Come Home. His latest film turns the spotlight on our social benefits system. Daniel Blake is a 59 year old carpenter signed off from his work after a heart attack. The Department of Works and Pensions judges him fit for work and denies him any disability benefits, making him apply for a Jobseekers Allowance. He has to enter the almost Kafkaesque bureaucracy of that process, and in doing so meets single mother Katie similarly embroiled. Winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2016, it gives a human face to the cold statistics of being on the breadline in ‘austerity’ Britain.