Ken Loach, Cannes and his leading man Dave Turner

May 25, 2023

As the showbiz sun sets on the 76th Cannes film festival, the movie industry travelling circus leaves town as quickly as it arrived. But for Dave Turner, a Geordie unknown plucked out of obscurity to be the star of Ken Loach's new movie, The Old Oak, the thrill of being at the world's most prestigious film festival will stay with him for the rest of his life.

"It is surreal. It is unbelievable. Wow just wow. To see groups of men walking round in full dinner jackets and people in ball gowns going to premieres… it's certainly bizarre."

As soon as Dave Turner's flight landed in Nice, he was whisked away in a £150,000 chauffeur driven BMW to the opulent five-star Marriot hotel on Le Croisette, where all the stars stay. Dave's room is one of the cheaper ones apparently - 1,600 euros a night - because he didn't have a sea view! This parallel universe is a shock to both our systems.

We are sat at a café overlooking the Palace de Festival and a harbour jam-packed with multimillion-pound super yachts.

"Have you managed to get yourself on a yacht yet?" I ask.

"No no! I think Ken has managed to avoid it for 15 visits so I am not going to go on a yacht!

"I do find the disparity of wealth makes me feel uncomfortable. You look out and see these yachts the size of battleships, enormous and you see people very very wealthy walking round and yet you walk five minutes from the seafront and there is abject poverty and people begging. I am well aware of that contradiction.

"But I am just going to savour every moment. I can't wait for all the cast and crew are together again. It has been a year since I have seen some of them."

When he retired from a 30-year career in the Tyne and Wear fire service, Dave Turner started working in a County Durham pit village pub. A friend put him forward for a tiny part in I, Daniel Blake, which led to a marginally bigger role in Sorry We Missed You, the two previous Ken Loach films set on Tyneside.

But apart from those blink-and-you'll-miss-him appearances, he has no professional acting experience. But the double Palme d'Or winning director saw something in him and he was unwittingly cast as the male lead in the third and final film of Ken Loach's north east trilogy.

"The fact that it has got into Cannes is reassuring because the thing I was most nervous about was bearing in mind this is almost certainly Ken's last major film, I didn't want to be the main actor in his last film which sank like a stone.

"The minute I found out we were in Cannes, the relief was immense. Because I realised that I can't be that bad if it is in Cannes. It was literally a weight off me shoulders."

Dave plays the role of TJ Ballantyne who runs a pub in a former mining village which becomes disputed territory when a group of Syrian refugees are rehoused in the area. So what is he hoping people who live where the film was shot will think about the storyline and how they are portrayed?

"I hope they don't think it is in anyway denigrating because it is not. All we are trying to do from the outset is to highlight the fact that a lot of parts of the north east, the last of investment going back decades, particularly since the miners strike, has been disgraceful. And the fact that more than twice the amount of refugees are placed in the north east where there is the least money and none of them go to the south where there is the most money.

"So this is not in anyway, a criticism of the northeast, it is basically trying to shine a light on the fact that the north east has been starved of investment for a long times now.

"Communities have been left to rot in some places. Everyone from the north east will be able to identify the plot. The Old Oak is the only public space left in the village and that is replicated across the north east. There's lots of places, where they have lost all the pubs, lost all the shops and we filmed in Horden, Easington Colliery… and those were vibrant communities not that long ago in my lifetime.

"And now because of the lack of investment, they have just been left to rot and people are finding it a very difficult time. So I hope the people in the north east look at this and think it is done with the right intentions. It is done with love, it is done with care and we just want to highlight the unfairness."

The industrial grey coalfields couldn't be further away from the shimmering blue Cote d'Azur where the 59-year-old from Blaydon, Gateshead, now finds himself.

"Standing behind the bar at a pub in Murton, it's a million miles away from here. People kept telling me last year, you'll end up in Cannes. I didn't even consider that. I didn't think… the more people told us, the more I was in denial, I didn't think it would happen.

"So when I got the phone call to say we were In Competition, that was, it was, a major major shock to me system. It really was. I hadn't allowed myself to believe it until that point so now three or four weeks later, here we are. Yeah it's Cannes alright!"

On this trip of a lifetime, everyman Dave has been thrust into the international limelight for the first time, with a whirlwind of press, photocalls and a red carpet premiere to navigate. But he's not alone. He has a festival veteran by his side.

When we meet later that same afternoon, Ken and his long-term collaborator, the multi-award winning screenwriter Paul Laverty, have already talked to a hundred journalists in a second day of back to back interviews. Ken yawns and looks understandably tired. He 87 in June but his stamina is legendary, as is his lifelong mission, with his small gang of loyal film-makers, to tell the stories of forgotten, traumatised and marginalised communities.

But unlike their last two films, this new full length feature has a message of hope at its core. I asked Ken how important it was to unveil The Old Oak at Cannes.

"The Cannes festival is the biggest event in world cinema I think. As a place to launch a film, nothing compares to it. There is no other way of getting that attention. Cannes is unique.

"It would be great to hear the accents again on the screen here. It's a big audience. If they like it, you know it and if they don't like it you know it too! We will have to see what happens tomorrow night. I am always anxious really. Never take anything for granted."

As it turns out, he had nothing to worry about. The director and his swansong film received a huge standing ovation inside the 2,000-plus seater cinema.

"It couldn't have been better really to be honest. They applauded quite a lot and there were quite emotional feelings in the room. That is the first real audience that has seen it and it was extraordinary." :

Ken Loach says this is likely to be his last film but for the firefighter turned film star, could this be might the start of a whole new career?

"Never say never… but, if this is it for me, I am quite content with that. I've been in three Ken Loach films, to be at Cannes, I had dinner with Ken last night. Just to share that experience, it's absolutely incredible. I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth at the moment. "

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