I, Daniel Blake

I, Daniel Blake (2016) — watch online Ken Loach's Palme d'Or-winning drama on iFILM. The film was written by Paul Laverty and won the top prize at Cannes — Loach's second Palme d'Or after The Wind That Shakes the Barley in 2006.

Daniel Blake is a 59-year-old Newcastle carpenter. After a heart attack, his doctors say he cannot work. The welfare system says he must prove he is actively seeking work anyway — or payments stop. Daniel has never used a computer. He cannot navigate the online application portal. The phone queue stretches for hours. In the waiting room he meets Katie, a single mother of two who was relocated from London to Newcastle by the housing authority. Dave Johns and Hayley Squires play two people who find each other in a system designed to exhaust people into giving up.

Loach films it straight: no swelling score, no cathartic speeches, just the specific bureaucratic texture of a life being dismantled form by form. That restraint is what makes it land so hard. Stream I, Daniel Blake (2016) in full on iFILM.