Perhaps it’s coincidence. The final film in Ken Loach’s filmography has been teased as retirement bait for years, yet this time the signals feel more solid. It is slated to close the set of Palme d’Or contenders at Cannes, a moment that has everyone watching with renewed curiosity about whether Loach will truly bow out this year.
For the festival, there is a natural impulse to stretch the world premiere out as late as possible. Old Oak, arriving just a day before the prize ceremony, becomes more than a premiere date. It reads like a ceremonial gesture, a final act that blends with a deeply personal bond linking director and moment. With the presence of this year’s entry, Cannes will have added 17 titles to its competition and Loach has already earned two Palme d’Ors in his career. The most telling praise for the film, given the circumstances, is simply that it sits well within the majority of his prior work.
The drama unfolds in a northern English town, where the social fabric frays under the pressure of an economic downturn. The arrival of a group of Syrian refugees tests a community that has long defined itself by traditional boundaries. Much of the action takes place inside a worn pub, where photographs of workers’ struggles line the walls and split the room into two atmospheres—one of solidarity, the other where hostility and prejudice hold sway. The neighborhood tends to interpret its misfortunes through a lens of grievance, sometimes expressed with humor and sometimes with raw pain. In essence, the film maps a setting that feels almost like a living metaphor for Loach’s ongoing preoccupation: the condition of the working class and the social barriers that hinder real solidarity.
Like many of Loach’s recent efforts, Old Oak features a gallery of characters who are vivid, imperfect, and morally weighted, with the screenplay co-created by Paul Laverty. The stories in this oeuvre often propose paths toward resolution, even when the problems appear stubborn or immovable. They sometimes lean into didacticism or melodrama as tools to illuminate truths about class, community, and resilience. In that sense, Old Oak embodies the director’s enduring approach: a willingness to place ordinary people at the center of compelling, contested circumstances. And given the arc of his career, it is not surprising that he would choose to honor his long-standing themes while inviting fresh perspectives to the screen.
etruscan treasures
Wonderland, released in 2014, marked a turning point for Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, who draws on folklore, myth, and the cinematic heritage of her country to craft something distinctly contemporary. In the current competition, La Chimera unveils a tale centered on a young man framed by a gang that desecrates tombs to sell artifacts to the highest bidder. Yet his motive diverges from self-enrichment: he seems to possess a gift that allows him to sense a supernatural link to the world of the dead. The narrative threads him through a complex web of interdimensional connections and a relationship with a woman who becomes a constant presence in his life and destiny. Rohrwacher’s film unfolds like a meditation on value, memory, and the haunting pull of the past, all wrapped in a vivid, tactile cinematic language.
The director’s use of esoteric imagery and symbolic devices underscores a broader meditation on gender, power, and utopian longing. La Chimera presents an intimate, almost mythic, vision of a society capable of reimagining itself through a feminist lens that questions traditional authority and the material demands of the present. In Rohrwacher’s hands, the tale becomes a striking assertion of creativity, placing her among the most idiosyncratic and inventive voices working in contemporary cinema.