Ken Loach speaking at the Cinéma de la Plage screening

Source: Ben Dalton

Ken Loach speaking at the Cinéma de la Plage screening

Ken Loach made a special visit to the Cannes Film Festival yesterday (Tuesday, May 19), where he celebrated the European support he says made his films possible and disagreed with the comments of his “good friend” Wim Wenders on politics and film.

“Thank you to all the people in France who have supported our films, and come to watch them, and have come tonight,” said Loach, while introducing a screening of Cannes 1995 Competition title Land And Freedom at the Cinéma de la Plage beach venue.

“Without your support and friendship, and also for the people in Italy and other European countries, we would not have had a career, we would not have made these films at all. We’ve always relied on your great support and the great welcome you’ve always given us.”

Loach, who turns 90 next month, received a sustained standing ovation when taking to the stage – a regular occurrence in the competitive sections but less common at the beach venue. He was guided by his regular screenwriter and this year’s Competition jury member Paul Laverty.

The UK director expressed his disagreement with Wenders’ comments at the opening of this year’s Berlinale, when the German director said that filmmakers “are the opposite of politics”.

“The worst thing is not the violence of the bad, it is the silence of the good,” said Loach, quoting Martin Luther King. “When we see exploitation, oppression, gross wealth, and desperate poverty, and when we see wars and war crimes, and let’s spell it out, the genocide of Israel.”

He also quoted US singer Paul Robeson in saying, “artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilisation’s radical voice.”

“It’s not a bad job to be the radical voice of civilisation, and that’s our task, and it’s a good one,” said Loach. He also recalled thinking “we’ll never see fascism again” at the time of the 1995 launch of Land And Freedom, which tells the story of a UK volunteer in the socialist forces in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

“How wrong we were, because fascism now is on the march again,” said the director. “This time it comes not wearing jackets, it comes looking like our friend. They are using the desperate pain that many people feel, in saying those to blame are the poorest people of all, the most vulnerable, the ones who need our help.”

“It is such an honour and privilege to come back to Cannes this last time,” said Loach, who has screened in Competition a record 15 times – five more than any other director – and retired from filmmaking following 2023’s Competition title The Old Oak.

Following the introduction, Loach took a seat in one of the metal chairs lining the Croisette to watch the film.

Together

“With the support of wonderful festivals like Cannes, we’ve been able to stay together for a long time,” said Sixteen Films producer Rebecca O’Brien, for whom Land And Freedom was a first outright production with Loach. “I’m really grateful for that. For me, the film represents so much passion, and that passion of what can be, can still live with us.”

Having spoken up on the topic of Gaza at the festival’s opening press conference, Laverty called for the audience to “remember and reclaim the Genocide Convention.”

“There is not only a duty to punish and prevent genocide. There is a duty not to collude with it, and there is collusion right up to our eyebrows in Britain, the rogue state of the United States, and many states in Europe, with a few honourable exceptions. Let’s give a shoutout to the wonderful people of Gaza, let them hear your voice.”

Loach is one of 10 filmmakers to have won two Palme d’Ors, for The Wind That Shakes The Barley in 2006 and I, Daniel Blake in 2016.

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