Ken Loach engages with reality in a way that is both artistically brilliant and politically and socially aware, reaching audiences across generations, cultures and countries.
Professor Giovanni Molari, Rector of University of Bologna
12 November 2025
'The camera can see how you've lived': director Ken Loach delivers a lecture at King's
Director Ken Loach accepted an Honorary Degree from the University of Bologna at a ceremony held at King’s College London.
British director Ken Loach was awarded an Honorary Degree in Philosophy from the University of Bologna at a ceremony hosted at King’s. This event was part of the Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum programme, taking place at King’s from 11-13 November.
Hundreds watched the live stream of the ceremony, broadcast at the Bologna University Library.
Ken Loach was recognised for ‘his unique capacity to recreate, through the cinematographic language, a critical, complex and profoundly human reading of the contemporary historic and social reality’.
The nomination proposed by the Department of Philosophy, together with the Department of Arts at the University of Bologna, explains that the motivation behind the award ‘does not lie so much in the well-known importance of Loach and his artistic profile, but in his specific ability to provide a problematising image of reality, the fruit not only of civil passion but also of a marked philosophical sensitivity.’
Professor Giovanni Molari, Rector of the University of Bologna, conferred the honorary degree onto Ken Loach.
In his honorary lecture, Ken Loach shared reflections on his career, spanning 60 years of filmmaking.
Italian post-war films influenced him strongly as a director: ‘They made it clear that the working class was the subject of the film. We were used to seeing middle-class people, people who spoke posh, aristocrats, people with servants. And the Italian films taught me that the working-class could be heroes, and that was a great lesson.’
The camera can see who you are. It can see your skin. It can see how you have lived. It can see if you work with your hands. It can see what your diet is. Do you eat well? Do you eat bad food? How is your body changed by work? The skin on your hands, how you talk, how you use language, your jokes, your relationships, everything about you.
Ken Loach, award-winning filmmaker
His aim, the director said, has always been to reveal contradictions in society through telling small stories – about people, their relationships and families. Together with writers, it was his job to create stories through which people felt a new level of reality.
You cannot make films about slogans. You have to make films about people. Politics lives in people. It is their experiences. It is their struggles. It is their relationships. It is their sadness. It is in their anger. It is in their suffering. But it is also in their laughter, and their jokes, and the fact how they get on with each other and how they survive.
Ken Loach, award-winning filmmaker
To Ken Loach, there is no hierarchy in filmmaking: ‘In creating films, there has to be a sense of enjoyment and mutual respect. A sense where everyone is comfortable, respected, given credit and knows that they can make themselves vulnerable – and not be mocked or laughed at, but respected. And it is the director’s job to ensure that.’
Ken Loach is a renowned British film and television director, celebrated for his commitment to social realism and politically charged storytelling.
His approach involves casting non-professional actors, incorporating authentic dialects and shooting on location to capture the reality of everyday life.
He is one of ten filmmakers to receive the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival twice – for his films The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016).
Ken Loach is a recipient of the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film (2016), BIFA for Best British Independent Film (1998, 2002), European Film Award for Best Film (1992, 1995), César Award for Best Film from the European Union (2005) and Best Foreign Film (1996, 2017) and other awards.