UK DRAMA:  This often funny and ultimately intensely moving tale of the friendship between an out-of-work Newcastle carpenter and a young single mother won for Britain’s Ken Loach a second Palme d’Or for Best Film at Cannes in 2016 and the BAFTA for Best British Film this year.

I, Daniel Blake is the story of an unlikely but tender friendship between Katie [Hayley Squires], a single mother from London with two kids, and Dan [Dave Johns], a Geordie carpenter in his late fifties who’s out of work and recovering from a heart attack.

Both Katie and Dan are feeling the sharp end of the shrinking welfare state: Katie has been forced to move her children north to Newcastle to find a flat; Dan is stuck in a nightmarish bureaucratic limbo between work, illness and benefits. Forces beyond both are turning them into different people. Dan is at first able to criticise, even laugh at, the system that’s crushing him till he can’t take it anymore and takes a stand. Dan and Katie’s situation is reflective of the toxic climate that has developed around ‘welfare’ and shows how people in Britain today are being marginalised by austerity politics.

“This rare political drama touches the soul … we believe, completely, in these people.” — Owen Gleiberman, Variety