Film Fest Gent opens with Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake'

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22 Aug 2016
Film Fest Gent will open the 43rd edition on 11 October with Cannes Palme d’Or winner “I, Daniel Blake”. It will be the third time that the filmmaker himself will attend the biggest festival in Belgium.

The tale of Daniel Blake, a 59-year-old widower carpenter from Newcastle, who is fighting to hold on to his welfare benefits, when he spots a woman in a similar predicament at the welfare office, he tries to help her & the two kids get set up... leading into a surrogate family.

Artistic director Film Fest Gent, Patrick Duynslaegher about the film: "We are very pleased to open with the new film by Ken Loach. For half a century his films about injustice and social inequality prove the courage and solidarity of the needy and oppressed. Again with “I, Daniel Blake”, we follow two people caught in a merciless Kafkaesque bureaucracy, shown in Loach's famous social realist style. This film is a cry for help, but also a heartbreaking human drama about courage, self-respect and solidarity. A particularly relevant, warm and generous movie in these neoliberal times of austerity and government policy failures."

The public pre-sale for the opening film in Vooruit will start on 23 August, tickets on sale through www.filmfestival.be and www.vooruit.be.