The Old Oak
country, year
UK, 2023
genre
drama
running time
113′
directed by
Ken Loach
languages
English
subtitles
Slovene subtitles
about the film
The Old Oak is not only the last pub still standing, but also the only remaining public space where people can meet in what was once a thriving mining community. The Old Oak becomes a place of friction when Syrian refugees are placed in the town without prior notice and the old and new community are suddenly forced to coexist.
what was said about the film
»The film is about conflict, deprivation and alienation, from neglect, from the political people who run things, from poverty. It is an area of England in the Northeast, which is an old mining area where the mines closed. And the right-wing party, the Tories, that closed the mines, were determined not only to close down the industry, but to destroy the communities. The area has just been neglected for the last 40 years. Although there’s still the spirit of the solidarity of the miners when they were there, there’s also dissatisfaction and lack of hope. And into that area comes placed refugees from the Syrian war who have all those negative feelings, plus the trauma of being in a war and placed somewhere where most of them don’t speak English. How do they cope and how do those two groups find a way of living together, and can they? It is how those interactions play out, really, with the film of us.«
- Ken Loach, interviewed for Cannes film festival
»Loach might be the angriest he’s ever been, blaming not just the politicians but even the British people themselves for rolling over for increasingly right-wing, authoritarian regimes. /…/ In that respect, The Old Oak is not asking us to settle our differences but to accept our similarities in a world being carved up by the wealthy. If this is Loach’s legacy, it’s a good one, and you can sum it up in just three words: strength, solidarity and resistance.«
- Damon Wise, Deadline
trailer