PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Dave Johns, actor in Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake from the 69th Cannes Film Festival

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

Dave Johns plays the role of the protagonist in I, Daniel Blake, the new film by Ken Loach, in competition at the 69th Cannes Film Festival. Dave is an English stand-up comedian, writer and actor. I, Daniel Blake marks his debut on a feature film. As per usual, Ken Loach didn’t give his actors the script of the film ahead of time, so Dave Johns told us about how he prepared for his role and about how he auditioned for the part.

I, DANIEL BLAKE: Daniel Blake, 59, has worked as a joiner most of his life in Newcastle. Now, after a heart attack and nearly falling from a scaffold, he needs help from the State for the first time in his life. He crosses paths with a single mother Katie and her two young children, Daisy and Dylan. Katie’s only chance to escape a one-roomed homeless hostel in London has been to accept a flat in a city she doesn’t know some 300 miles away. Daniel and Katie find themselves in no-man’s land caught on the barbed wire of welfare bureaucracy as played out against the rhetoric of ‘striver and skiver’ in modern day Britain