Ken Loach quotes:

The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator.

I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.

About Thatcher's death: Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out on competetive tender and accept the cheapest bid. That's what she would have wanted.

Shaping it is something I would expect to do together with a writer, because that's a director's job.

Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, we can tell the truth about the present.

One lesson to learn is that the press and the broadcasters are not neutral. And it seems we have to learn it each time there is a dispute: they are actually committed to one side.

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film.

The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is.

The Iraq war is a huge subject and there have been many films about it. But it was when the private contractors started taking over and taking responsibilities from the regular army, which hides the war. You have these private armies of mercenaries acting with immunity for their actions, the worst of which was the Blackwater case where they killed 17 Iraqi civilians and the guys who did it just went home. We [screenwriter Paul Laverty and Loach] felt this deserved a story.

A film is one small voice among other large ones. The film is a tiny part of the discourse. You do what you can but under no illusions of what a film can do.

Every time a colony wants independence, the questions on the agenda are: a) how do you get the imperialists out, and b) what kind of society do you build? There are usually the bourgeois nationalists who say, 'Let's just change the flag and keep everything as it was.' Then there are the revolutionaries who say, 'Let's change the property laws.' It's always a critical moment.

In the end the privatisation of war is not acceptable. We shouldn't be issuing these sub-contracts to these contracting companies because the people who run them are making millions. There should be no relationship between ex-politicians and them, like John Reid and Malcolm Rifkind, who are now associated with contracting companies having been ministers of defence. That's unacceptable.

No political politicians on the board and stop sub-contracting anyway, which means getting out of Iraq. If anything needs to be policed, it needs to be done through a proper international body... not through us sub-contracting teams of mercenaries.

You'll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.

A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage.