Description:
Two-time winner of Golden Palm Award, Ken Loach, and his long-standing screenwriter Paul Laverty have come out of retirement for this story about new forms of labour exploitation.
Ricky, Abby and their two children live in Newcastle. They are a strong family who care for each other. Ricky has skipped from one labouring job to another while Abby, who loves her work, cares for old people. Despite working longer and harder they realise they will never have independence or their own home. It's now or never; the app revolution offers Ricky a golden opportunity. He and Abby make a bet. She sells her car so Ricky can buy a shiny new van and become a freelance driver, with his own business at last. The modern world impinges on these four souls in the privacy of their kitchen; the future beckons.
"After we'd finished I, Daniel Blake, I was thinking, "Well, maybe that's the last film." But when we were going to the food banks for our research many of the people that were coming in were working - part time, zero-hours contracts. This is a new type of exploitation. The so-called gig economy, the self-employed or agency workers, the casualised workforce just continued to feature in mine and Paul's [Laverty] ongoing daily conversations. Gradually the idea emerged that maybe there was another film that might be worth making - not exactly a companion piece to I, Daniel Blake but a related film." (Ken Loach)