Kes

“Oh, Kes. Another one of our great British filmmakers, Ken Loach. It's a humanist story and it's tragic and it's beautiful and it's about someone who's been kind of deemed unworthy, unnecessary, useless and disposable finding out that he is anything but through his connection to nature, through his connection to a wild creature that accepts him as he is because he's a wild creature himself. It's an honoring of his own wildness and all of our wildness.”

“Kes. It’s about a young boy in northern England, he finds his power, his magic, is in living with nature. And he goes through this sort of Highlander-esque becoming. The man, school and work and family, they’re like, “That’s not cool. We need you to fit into the organization.” It’s quite moving. It’s just a really powerful human story. And I just– I love that. I love work that makes us think about our place on this planet and how we relate to one another and to Mother Nature.”

“Oh, Kes. Remember Kes? I haven’t got Kes. You should have it in your collection. I should. I’ve got all of Ken Loach’s stuff, I have to say. He and I get accosted in the street by people, and they say to me, 'I love your film about the boy with a bird.' You know, 'Are you, are you Ken Loach?' And I say, 'No.' And then they ask Ken, 'Are you Mike Leigh?' And he says, 'No, he’s not.'”

“And Kes, Ken Loach is another one I love.”

“I am gonna pick Kes just because I've just moved to Sheffield in the England. Barry Hines who wrote this and Ken Loach who directed it. This film is probably the best thing that they did together and it's just incredible like every one of our age in the UK has seen this film it's just such a iconic bit of British culture and its really like captures the heartbeat of the north and yeah it's just amazing.”

“Kes. Wow. Oh God, what age are you allowed to show Kes to your kids? Early Ken Loach films. First time I noticed I was watching a film by a filmmaker. It's really powerful, quite shocking, beautiful story.”

“This and Riff-Raff are my two favorite Ken Loach films and I'm going to be making a film with kids very soon and this is like one of the best coming-of-age films ever so I definitely want to revisit this.”

“Because of Kes, which I think is... Yeah. Here. So we went to Karlovy Vary, which is this incredible film festival in the Czech Republic, and it was, I think, the 60th anniversary and it was coinciding with Ken Loach’s 90th birthday, and he had won their big prize when Kes first came out. So I watched it on the big screen there, just, like, a couple of months ago, and to say I was destroyed afterwards is an understatement. I couldn’t... I couldn’t speak.”