The Gamekeeper

The Gamekeeper is a 1980 British drama film directed by Ken Loach. It is based on a novel of the same name by Barry Hines. It competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. As with Barry Hines's other scripts, most of the dialogue is in Yorkshire dialect. The film was produced by Associated Television, which broadcast to the English Midlands. On its release, it was only shown in the ATV area and at a few film festivals. The dialogue in the film was difficult for residents in some areas of the Midlands to understand. After this very limited release, the film fell into obscurity and became one of Loach's rarest films. In September 2007, it was released on DVD for the first time in the Ken Loach Collection boxset and again became widely available. The DVD recording was remastered by the British Film Institute from a recording of the original ATV broadcast, with a director's commentary as an extra.