Kenneth Charles Loach (born 17 June 1936; Nuneaton) is a retired British film director, screenwriter and producer. His humanist values and socialist political views are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty (Poor Cow, 1967), homelessness (Cathy Come Home, 1966), labour rights (Riff-Raff, 1991; The Navigators, 2001), and revolutionary struggle (Land and Freedom, 1995; The Wind That Shakes the Barley, 2006).

Kenneth Charles Loach was born on 17 June 1936 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the son of Vivien (née Hamlin) and John Loach. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and at the age of 19 went to serve in the Royal Air Force. He read law at St Peter's College, Oxford and graduated with a third-class degree. As a member of the Oxford University Experimental Theatre Club he directed an open-air production of Bartholomew Fair for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford, in 1959 (when he also took the role of the shady horse-dealer Dan Jordan Knockem). After Oxford, he began a career in the dramatic arts.

Loach's film Kes (1969) was voted the seventh greatest British film of the 20th century in a poll by the British Film Institute. Two of his films, The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016), received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making him one of only nine filmmakers to win the award twice.