How to Make a Ken Loach Film is an interactive film whose audience can choose its length and composition.
At first, a film of about forty minutes examines the practical details involved in Ken Loach's work by following the making of his latest film, I, Daniel Blake. We accompany him as he works with his main collaborators and actors, from writing to casting, from shooting to editing, right up to the movie's presentation in Cannes.
At 10 key moments, we offer the audience the chance to discover principles and past experiences that underlie this process. They can choose to add sequences made up of interviews with Ken Loach and his prior collaborators, as well as film excerpts. The main film is then enhanced by stories about his political activism, the art of casting, his shooting principles, his relationship with realism, his tricks for surprising his actors and capturing that moment, sometimes verging on manipulation, those instants when you can no longer tell reality from fiction…
How to Make a Ken Loach Film offers the audience the possibility of creating their own film according to what they are most interested in. They can choose to insert as many sequences as they want into the main film, thus creating their own path, their own film, between practice and theory, past and present.
Emmanuel Roy, director
Emmanuel Roy is as much of a geek as he is a director, editor, and narrator. His last projects were steeped in the web, interactivity, and political activism: Nos Chers Paradis (broadcast by Arte in November 2015 and co-directed by Blandine Grosjean) or La part du feu (released in movie theaters in November 2013). He didn't hesitate when we asked him to become immersed in Loach's life and give an account of his films and his relationship with reality.
Louise Osmond, interviews and original film director
Director Louise Osmond started her career as a journalist before moving into documentaries. Her recent work includes Dark Horse, winner of the International Documentary Audience Award at Sundance 2015 and BIFA for Best Documentary. Other work includes the BAFTA-nominated, RTS-winning Richard III – The King in the Car Park; Deep Water, selected for Telluride, winner of a Grierson Award and Best Documentary at the Rome Film Festival and The Beckoning Silence, winner of an International Emmy and the Grand Jury Prize at the Banff Mountain Film Festival and the New Zealand Mountain Film Festival.