Ken Loach returns to Newcastle to depict a lower-middle family striving to keep afloat, as the father embarks on a new job as a delivery driver for a ruthless package company. As much as Loach’s new film is about the toxicity of zero hour contracts, the family is also preyed upon by The Device (tellingly called “The Gun” at one point). The bullish lug of a boss just wants to keep the mobile device happy, and even a blissful moment between father and daughter is interrupted by a two-minute beep: time to get a move on and deliver, deliver, deliver. This is how Ken Loach does condemnation. The anger is heard by pointing at the glorious absurdity of it all. His “own business?” The work van is not his, but he’s obliged to pay for it.

Some scenes of domestic conflict almost tilt into soap opera—which is something I didn’t find with I, Daniel Blake—but Sorry We Missed You still manages to be characteristically devastating and the ending has a bold restraint one might not expect.