The Old Oak

For what will reportedly be his last film as director, Ken Loach, now 87, reunites with screenwriter Paul Laverty for their fourteenth feature together, a collaboration that has seen the duo win two Palmes d’Or.

In Northern English city Durham, T.J. Ballantyne (Dave Turner) is landlord of the titular pub, a rundown establishment that serves as a focal point for a community still scarred by Margaret Thatcher’s devastating attitude to the miners’ strike of the 1980s. Feeling ignored by those in authority, resentment is to the fore when groups of Syrian refugees are housed in the area. T.J.’s friendship with Yara (Ebla Mari), a young woman desperate for news of her imprisoned father, and his attempts to merge the communities, puts him and his meagre livelihood at risk in a typically compassionate and humane call to arms from Laverty and Loach.