It’s June 2022, a week of rail workers’ strikes are under way and refugees are in the news whether arriving from Ukraine or via boats across the channel despite the threat of transportation to Rwanda. Ken Loach and his old compadres, writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien, could not have chosen a more pertinent time for shooting their latest film, The Old Oak, which premieres at the Cannes film festival this month.
The story is set in an anonymous former mining town decades after the pit closures. Shops are boarded up, money is scarce, divisions over the 1984 miners’ strike linger. There is still a pub, the eponymous Old Oak, run by a former miner, TJ Ballantyne, played by Dave Turner, but it is on its last legs, kept afloat by a ragbag of disgruntled and opinionated regulars. Into town comes a group of Syrian refugees to be rehoused, including a self-confident young woman, Yara (played by the Syrian actor Ebla Mari) who likes taking photos of what she encounters. Some locals object, not wanting any “fucking ragheads” to be “dumped on us”. Others try to make them welcome.
