I, Daniel Blake

A 59-year-old carpenter in Newcastle finds his life upended after a heart attack leaves him unable to work. With his doctor declaring him unfit for employment, Daniel Blake applies for state support, only to be told he must keep looking for a job or face sanctions. What should be a straightforward claim becomes a tangle of forms, appointments and contradictory rules that he, a man who has never used a computer, is ill-equipped to handle.

During his visits to the job centre, Daniel meets Katie, a single mother of two who has been placed in housing far from the city she knows. The two form a bond, each helping the other through the pressures of a system that seems designed to wear them down, while Daniel also finds support among former colleagues and neighbours.

Ken Loach directed this drama, the eighteenth of the twenty features listed for him, arriving between Jimmy's Hall and Sorry We Missed You, from a screenplay by his regular collaborator Paul Laverty and produced by Rebecca O'Brien. Dave Johns plays Daniel, with Hayley Squires as Katie and Briana Shann and Dylan McKiernan as her children. Made across Belgium, the United Kingdom and France, it took about 16 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.8 from 68,000 votes, on TMDB 7.7 from 1,576 votes, while critics gave it 8 out of 10 from 184 reviews, a warmer reception than audiences recorded.