Daniel Blake, 59, has worked as a joiner most of his life in Newcastle. Now, for the first time ever, following an illness, he needs help from the State. He crosses paths with single mother Katie and her two young children, Daisy and Dylan. Katie’s only chance to escape a one-roomed homeless hostel in London is to accept a flat in a city she doesn’t know, some 300 miles away. Daniel and Katie find themselves in no-man’s land, caught on the barbed-wire of welfare bureaucracy as played out against the rhetoric of ‘striver and skiver’ in modern-day Britain.
BIFA voters say:
“I was blown away by this film, an incredibly moving, powerful drama, well acted, well directed.”