Kes

“They beat him. They deprived him. They ridiculed him. They broke his heart. But they couldn’t break his spirit.”

Billy Casper (David Bradley), fifteen and small for it, wants a purpose of his own in a Yorkshire house where his mother (Lynne Perrie) and his older brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher) have no time for him. He finds it in a fledgling kestrel, which he names Kes and sets about training. Ken Loach shoots in plain daylight, so the boy in his thin school jumper and the bird on his glove stand out against the flat grey.