People’s solidarity across racial and national lines may look like an anachronistic idea at a time when animosities are fuelled and lines are drawn between people at the micro and macro level. Watching such solidarity becoming a reality on screen may perhaps be of some comfort. A few of the films being screened at the 28th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) depict such stories, which may even seem like wishful thinking now.
In legendary British filmmaker Ken Loach’s ‘The Old Oak’, one sees the pub at the centre of the narrative turning from a place where disgruntled locals vent their ire against migrants into the site of a heart-warming community dining. Loach, who has spent a lifetime bringing working class stories to the screen, has at the age of 87 made a film that foregrounds the racial tensions that have heightened in his country and across the Western world, following the influx of migrants.
The pub is located in a British village, which was once a bustling mining centre, but which now has evidently fallen on tough times following the closure of the mines, partly owing to the privatisation policies of the early 1990s. With the arrival of Syrian refugees into this fraught environment, some of the locals find a target to vent their anger for their economic plight.
