PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Hayley Squires, actress in the film I, Daniel Blake by Ken Loach 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

Our interview with Hayley Squires, actress in Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake, in the main competition of the 69th Cannes Film Festival. Squires takes us through the whole process of the making of the film, from the auditions to the preparation of the role and the challenges of Ken Loach’s technique – the director is known for revealing very little info and details on his film and the characters before shooting. Hayley Squires also reflects on how the situation her character, Katie, is struggling with is relatable and it is something that could happen to everybody.

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