NZIFF 2019 Sorry We Missed You

Directed by: Ken Loach

A most worthy follow-up to I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach’s new social-realist drama zeroes in on life as an average British family at the mercy of the modern day ‘gig economy’.

Though conspicuously absent from the Cannes winners’ podium, Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty left no stone unturned with their latest impassioned portrait of Britain’s working class. This firecracker of a film – which many are calling better than 2016 Palme d’Or triumph I, Daniel Blake – tackles the ground level struggle of raising a family of four against the wall of zero-hour contracts and zero-benefits employment.

“Sorry We Missed You finds Loach at his most insightful and clear-eyed… Kris Hitchen plays Ricky Turner, a Newcastle father of two who turns to delivery driving in an attempt to scrape together a mortgage deposit. He and his wife Abby (Debbie Honeywood) were ready to buy a decade ago, but Northern Rock’s collapse put paid to that, and they have been renting ever since…

Ricky’s supervisor at the depot, Maloney (Ross Brewster), talks a lot about choices and self-employment… But when work begins, everything looks suspiciously like old-fashioned factory-floor graft… The perks of employment – stability, comradeship, sane hours… time off in an emergency – are nowhere to be seen. Even Abby’s work as a carer is on a zero-hours basis, which leaves her zig-zagging from dawn to dusk between… patients… while parenting by mobile phone. Parcel by parcel, client by client, the film reveals the regime to be a cup-and-ball con trick.” — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph

“Fierce, open and angry, unironised and unadorned, about a vital contemporary issue whose implications you somehow don’t hear on the news… This brilliant film will focus minds.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian