Ken LoachFilmography

Great Directors

Actors: Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Todd Haynes

What Do You Know About Me?

Actors: Liliana Cavani, Vittorio de Seta, Daniele Luchetti, Wim Wenders, Ken Loach

Synopsis: Italy was one of the first European nations to establish a major film industry during the silent years, and after World War II it became a major center for movie making, hosting major international co-productions as well as vibrant and exciting local productions and spawning some of the most Read More

40 x 15

Synopsis: Director Olivier Jahan offers an glimpse into The Director's Fortnight, a sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival conceived by a group of filmmakers known as the Société des Réalisateurs de Films who sought to counter the academism of the main part of the world-renowned festival. Pierre-Henri Deleau Read More

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Crew: Director

Actors: Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham, Padraic Delaney, Orla Fitzgerald, Mary Riordan

Synopsis: Two brothers are caught on differing sides of the battle for Irish freedom in this politically minded historical drama from veteran British filmmaker Ken Loach. It's 1920, and Damien O'Donovan (Cillian Murphy) has recently graduated from medical school. Damien plans to leave the small village in Read More

It's a Free World...

Crew: Director

Actors: Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis, Leslaw Zurek, Joe Siffleet, Colin Coughlin

Synopsis: With a central trope that recalls Jerzy Skolimowski's Moonlighting (1982), Palme d'Or winner Ken Loach's ironically titled social-consciousness drama It's a Free World... dissects the problem of exploited immigrant labor from the perspective of one taking advantage. Actress Kierston Wareing stars Read More

To Each His Own Cinema

Crew: Director

Synopsis: At the time of its production, To Each His Own Cinema represented the latest arrival in a tidal wave of internationally oriented omnibus films, with no official relation between them but all produced within a few years of one another. Few could claim a roster of talent comparable to this one Read More

Carry on Ken

Actors: Ken Loach

Tickets

Crew: Director

Actors: Carlo delle Piane, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Silvana De Santis, Filippo Trojano, Carolina Benvenga

æ Fond Kiss

Crew: Director

Actors: Atta Yaqub, Eva Birthistle, Ahmad Riaz, Shabana Bakhsh, Shamshad Akhtar

Synopsis: Director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty team up again for the romantic drama Ae Fond Kiss. The filmmaking team's third film set in Glasgow, this story involves a mixed-race relationship that causes problems for all involved. Casim Khan (Atta Yaqub) lives with his Punjabi-born Muslim family in Read More

Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus

Actors: Hany Abu-Assad, Pedro Almodóvar, Vicente Aranda, Bruno Barde, Xavier Beauvois

September 11

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In the aftermath of the tragedies on September 11, 2001, the French film company Studio Canal called upon a group of filmmakers, representing various regions of the world, to address the scope of the situation in however broad or intimate a context as they saw fit. The one guideline they were Read More

Sweet Sixteen

Crew: Director

Actors: Martin Compston, William Ruane, Annmarie Fulton, Michelle Abercromby, Michelle Coulter

Synopsis: Paul Laverty writes his fourth script with director Ken Loach for the gritty coming-of-age drama Sweet Sixteen. Set in the port city of Greenock, Scotland, local kid Liam (Martin Compston) spends his days trying to make money with his best friend, Pinball (William Ruane). When he refuses to use Read More

The Navigators

Crew: Director

Actors: Dean Andrews, Tom Craig, Joe Duttine, Steve Huison, Venn Tracey

Synopsis: Acclaimed filmmaker Ken Loach follows up on his 2000 opus Bread and Roses about a Los Angeles janitors' strike with this drama about the privatization of British Rail. Set in South Yorkshire, the film opens with familiar British Rail sign being replaced with a shiny new one reading "East Midland Read More

Kenneth Loach: Portrait

Actors: Ken Loach, Rebecca O'Brien, Barry Ackroyd, Paul Laverty, Jonathan Morris

Bread and Roses

Crew: Director

Actors: Adrien Brody, Elpidia Carrillo, Frankie DaVila, George Lopez

Synopsis: Leftist filmmaker Ken Loach directs this grim drama about the plight of seemingly invisible office cleaners in contemporary L.A. who often earn as little as $6 a day without benefits. The film opens as Maya (Pilar Padilla), a young Mexican lass, is reuniting with her older sister Rosa (Elpidia Carrilio Read More

My Name Is Joe

Crew: Director

Actors: Peter Mullan, Louise Goodall, David McKay, Annemarie Kennedy, David Hayman

Synopsis: Actor Peter Mullan won the 1998 Cannes Film Festival "Best Actor" award with this film, directed by Ken Loach (Carla's Song, Ladybird, Ladybird). The drama is set in Possilpark, one of Glasgow's poorest neighborhoods, a rough section where half the population is out of work. Unemployed reformed Read More

Carla's Song

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Carlyle, Scott Glenn

Synopsis: British filmmaker Ken Loach blended a love story with strong political commentary in this powerful drama. George (Robert Carlyle) is a bus driver working in Glasgow who has a strong independent streak and has developed a serious crush on one of his regular passengers, a woman from Nicaragua named Read More

Land and Freedom

Crew: Director

Actors: Ian Hart, Rosana Pastor, Icíar Bollaín, Tom Gilroy, Marc Martinez

Synopsis: A reflective look at an idealistic young man's involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Land and Freedom combines wartime drama with impassioned political debate. Director Ken Loach, better known for his intimate portraits of working-class British life, begins on familiar turf in the present day Read More

Ladybird, Ladybird

Crew: Director

Actors: Crissy Rock, Vladimir Vega, Ray Winstone, Sandie Lavelle, Mauricio Venegas

Synopsis: A single mother struggles against the British social service system and her own troubled past in director Ken Loach's brutally realistic drama. Coming from a background of abuse and poverty, the hardened Maggie (Crissy Rock) has already suffered through a series of painful romances when she falls Read More

Raining Stones

Crew: Director

Actors: Bruce Jones, Julie Brown, Ricky Tomlinson, Tom Hickey, Gemma Phoenix

Synopsis: Bob (Bruce Jones) lives with his wife Anne (Julie Brown) and his daughter Coleen (Gemma Phoenix) in a poor English town. Bob scrapes by with whatever odd jobs come his way -- working as a bouncer, stealing green turf, cleaning septic tanks. Although Bob has no money and is living on the dole, he Read More

Riff-Raff

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Carlyle, Emer McCourt, Jimmy Coleman, George Moss, Ricky Tomlinson, Willie Ross

Synopsis: Socialist-leaning British director Ken Loach kicked off a decade's worth of acclaimed cinema with this surprisingly comic tale of working class laborers at a North London building site, written by Bill Jesse, a real-life construction worker who died before the film's release. Scottish ex-con Read More

Hidden Agenda

Crew: Director

Actors: Frances McDormand, Brian Cox, Brad Dourif, Mai Zetterling, Bernard Archard, Bernard Bloch

Synopsis: This political thriller is set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland's "Troubles" and directed in the documentary fashion common to British filmmaker Ken Loach's films. Paul Sullivan (Brad Dourif) and Ingrid Jessner (Frances McDormand) are American attorneys serving on a human rights group Read More

Singing the Blues in Red

Crew: Director

Actors: Gerulf Pannach, Fabienne Babe, Sigfrit Steiner, Christine Rose

Synopsis: A drama about personal conflicts and the political biases of the East and West German governments in the mid-'80s, this story focuses on the defection of a talented singer. Klaus (Gerulf Pannach) is finally granted permission to leave East Germany where he is no longer allowed to perform. But Read More

Which Side Are You On?

Crew: Director

Looks and Smiles

Crew: Director

Actors: Graham Green, Phil Askham

Synopsis: Graham Green (a juvenile player, not the writer nor the Native American actor of almost the same name) is the star of the British-made Looks and Smiles. A born square peg in a round hole, Green wants desperately to fit into the world. His efforts fail, and the world has another angry young man on Read More

The Gamekeeper

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Phil Askham, Rita May, Andrew Grubb, Peter Steels, Michael Hinchcliffe

Synopsis: In this pseudo-documentary, the lives of a small family are chronicled as they leave the gritty city behind when the millworker father takes a job as the gamekeeper on Lord Dronfield's estate. Because the Lord seldom visits his country estate, the family is left to themselves. The serious-minded Read More

Black Jack

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jean Franval, Stephen Hirst, Louise Cooper, Packie Byrne

Synopsis: In this fascinating adventure of the England of the 1750s, the huge Frenchman Black Jack (Jean Franval) miraculously survives a hanging by the British authorities in Yorkshire and escapes from the grim jaws of "justice." He takes to the countryside in the company of Tolly, a teenaged boy who is Read More

The Price of Coal

Crew: Director

Actors: Bobby Knutt

Synopsis: Two TV plays by Barry Hines were bracketed together as the British "miniseries" The Price of Coal. Both stories took place in Yorkshire, and both concerned a grungy coal-mining community. In "Meet the People," the townsfolk prepared for a visit from Royalty, while in the appropriately titled "Back Read More

Family Life

Crew: Director

Actors: Sandy Ratcliff, Bill Dean, Grace Cave, Malcolm Tierney, Alan MacNaughton

Synopsis: Released in England as Wednesday's Child, this earnest socially conscious drama explores the generation-gap between a pair of overbearing, strict parents and their rebellious, pregnant daughter Sandy Ratcliff. First they force her to get an abortion. Then mom and dad further exert their power over Read More

Kes

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Brian Glover

Synopsis: In this 1969 Ken Loach film, a 15-year-old named Billy Casper (played by acting newcomer David Bradley) suffers abuse both at home and at school in Yorkshire, England. At his home in the working-class section of Barnsley, Billy's brother beats him and his family neglects him. At school, most of Read More

Poor Cow

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Carol White, Terence Stamp, John Bindon, Kate Williams, Queenie Watts

Synopsis: Acclaimed British neo-realist filmmaker Ken Loach made his theatrical debut with this bleak kitchen-sink drama. Joy (Carol White) leads a life that makes her name seem like some sort of a cruel joke. Her husband Tom (John Bindon) is a second-rate burglar who shows neither her nor their infant Read More

Cathy Come Home

Crew: Director

Synopsis: British filmmaker Ken Loach began his illustrious career making television movies for the BBC's well-regarded Wednesday Play series. From the beginning, his films addressed social issues from a clearheaded leftist point-of-view. As Cathy Come Home demonstrates, Loach is a true social realist, in Read More

The Wednesday Play: Up the Junction

Crew: Director

Diary of a Young Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor Henry, Richard Moore, Nerys Hughes

Synopsis: Actually there were two young men in this BBC1 miniseries, played by Victor Henry and Richard Moore. A pair of Northern lads, our heroes head down to London to start life anew, and in the process endure a liberal education in the School of Hard Knocks. The six 45-minute episodes of Diary of Read More