I, Daniel Blake

"Although I’ve personally enjoyed previous Palme d’Or winners, they’re typically tough to sell to general audiences. I couldn’t tell my neighbour to sacrifice three hours for talky Turkish tale Winter Sleep, I would not dare push Michael Haneke’s Amour on my parents, and we all know where we stand on The Tree of Life."

"One of Loach's finest films, a drama of tender devastation that tells its story with an unblinking neorealist simplicity that goes right back to the plainspoken purity of Vittorio De Sica."

"The 80-year-old director still has plenty of fire in his belly. Warm, belligerent and, in places, unbearably moving."

"A spare film, muted in colour - and all the more powerful and urgent for it."

"This film intervenes in the messy, ugly world of poverty with the secular intention of making us see that it really is happening, and in a prosperous nation, too. I, Daniel Blake is a movie with a fierce, simple dignity of its own."

"If you're not going to see I, Daniel Blake, then don't bother telling me that you're a fan of good films. Because you're not."

"A fierce and often funny polemic designed to leave a lump in your throat and a fire in your belly."

"It's funny too in a if-you-didn't-laugh-you'd-cry kind of way."

"While the framework and perspective are familiar, the veteran Brit director's films can still have the power to grip us in an emotional chokehold."

"Loach scans the contemporary landscape, and instead of a firebrand approach of stereotype, delivers a film of immense sadness."