Ken Loach (1957)
15 July 2006
Top film director Ken Loach has had a very good year, winning the Academy Fellowship at the BAFTAS in May and then the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival for his film, The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Spanning 40 years and nearly 60 films (comprising 17 theatrical features and numerous dramas and documentaries for television), Ken has one of contemporary cinema's most intriguing and thoughtful careers. His finest films are at once explicitly political and yet humorous, powerfully emotional and yet very intellectual. Vincent Canby suggests that “Loach's movies may one day provide a more accurate record of a nation's collective unconscious than the work of any other single director”.