Film

Kes

Name: Kes
Genre: Drama
Released: 1970
Cast: David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Brian Glover

Ken Loach's 1970 study of Billy Casper, a bullied, invisible boy in a Yorkshire mining town who finds meaning training a wild kestrel. Shot with amateur actors and real accents, it's tender and unsentimental, funny in flashes and devastating by the end. For anyone wanting British social realism at its rawest — patient, plain-spoken, and quietly furious about what gets crushed out of ordinary lives.

TMDb rating

7.4

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Billy Elliot2000

Another northern English boy with an absent father figure finds an unlikely calling that everyone around him mocks or fails to understand; here it ends in triumph rather than tragedy.

But It's a crowd-pleaser with a soundtrack and a happy ending — Kes fans wanting the same bleakness will find this softer.

Ratcatcher1999

Lynne Ramsay's Glasgow-set film about a neglected boy in a decaying tenement estate, with the same unflinching eye for childhood cruelty and small moments of grace amid squalor.

But Even bleaker and more impressionistic than Kes, with almost no plot to hold onto at all.

The Selfish Giant2013no page yet

Clio Barnard's Bradford-set story of two excluded boys and a horse-and-cart scrapyard economy, filmed on the same kind of estates with the same non-professional rawness Loach pioneered.

But Deliberately punishing in its final act, more devastating than Kes even — go in braced for grief.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

My Octopus Teacher2020

Strip away the fiction and Kes's engine is this: a person adrift finds purpose and relief from grief by bonding with a wild, ungovernable creature that owes them nothing back.

A real man's real relationship with an octopus off a South African coast, shot over a year, gives you all of Kes's wonder at wildness without the schoolyard cruelty.

But No child at its centre and no British bleakness — it's contemplative and healing where Kes is angry.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning1960

The film that helped invent British kitchen-sink realism, with Albert Finney furious and alive as a factory worker chafing against everything expected of a young working man in provincial England.

But Its rebellion is angrier and more masculine-swagger than Kes's quiet defeat, a rowdier film with a different emotional register entirely.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning poster

This Sporting Life1963

A brutal, poetic study of a Yorkshire rugby league player, shot in the same grimy black-and-white terraces and factory towns, aching with thwarted ambition throughout.

But Richard Harris's performance is huge and theatrical where Billy Casper's is tiny and real — tonal whiplash if you go straight from one to the other.

Sweet Sixteen2002no page yet

Ken Loach again, with the same instinct for casting real teenagers and real Scottish streets, following a boy trying to build a life for his mother against every possible odd.

But Louder, more plot-driven and steeped in criminal-underworld stakes than Kes's patient stillness ever needs to be.

Fish Tank2009

Andrea Arnold's Essex-estate story of a friendless teenage girl who finds a fragile outlet in dance, with the same handheld intimacy and refusal to soften anyone's edges.

But A messier, sexually charged plot involving an adult that pulls it further from Kes's simplicity and innocence.

A Kind of Loving1962no page yet

Another Northern English drama about a young man trapped by circumstance and class, made just before Loach's generation pushed the genre further; quietly compassionate, plainly told.

But Its concerns are more romantic and adult than childhood, so it lacks Kes's specific ache of a lonely boy.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too1987no page yet

Same Yorkshire council-estate world decades later, same refusal to prettify working-class life, but funnier and ruder — Andrea Dunbar's script has real bite and real anger underneath the comedy.

But It's a comedy at heart, and its treatment of a genuinely troubling relationship hasn't aged simply.

The Red Balloon1956

Made fourteen years before Kes, this wordless French short gives a lonely boy an equally uncontrollable companion — a balloon instead of a bird — that the adult world resents and destroys.

Barely 34 minutes, almost no dialogue, and it distills the same idea — a child's one source of joy, and how casually grown-ups threaten it — into something almost fable-like.

But It's gentle and whimsical where Kes is sociologically furious, so don't go in expecting any grit at all.

My Life as a Zucchini2016

Same subject as Kes — a neglected child scraping together a foothold of dignity — but told through French stop-motion animation, trading Loach's despair for warmth without losing the ache.

An hour of gorgeous, big-eyed stop-motion puppetry about orphaned kids that somehow earns real tears without ever tipping into misery-tourism or cheap, easy sentiment either.

But Its kindness and short runtime make it feel almost weightless next to Kes's slow-building dread.