Kes

Director: Ken Loach

1969 / 111min / 35mm

Born into a working-class family and living in a dead-end coal mining town where his daily life consists of merciless bullying and his future doesn’t look much better, 15-year-old Billy (David Bradley) finds a secret source of joy when, one day, he scoops a young kestrel falcon out of its nest and begins teaching it the art of falconry. Loach’s second feature, one of the best-loved and most lovely British films of the 1960s, is the first on which Chris Menges is credited as cinematographer, the exquisite work he does here by working only with natural light marking the brilliant beginning of a legendary career.