Kes

In the 1968 novel *A Kestrel for a Knave*, Barry Hines tells the story of a boy, Billy Casper, and his unusual friendship with a kestrel (a type of falcon), which he names "Kes." Billy lives as the child of a working-class family in northern England, where he works as a newspaper delivery boy. His father has abandoned the family, and his older brother terrorizes him. To escape the harsh conditions at home and school, Billy retreats into daydreams until he eventually finds a falcon and raises it.

With Ken Loach’s sensitive adaptation of this well-known book in the UK, we are presenting a true rarity: the film was hardly noticed in the German-speaking world, but the British Film Institute ranked it as the seventh-best British film of the 20th century in a survey of experts. The performance of the then 14-year-old lead actor, David Bradley, was particularly praised.