Bath film director Ken Loach is celebrating after his latest – and perhaps last – movie has been selected to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
The 77-year-old, who won the Palme d'Or in 2006 with The Wind that Shakes the Barley, has revealed Jimmy's Hall may be his last fictional feature.
But the film, a drama set in Ireland about a communist coming home in the 1930s to reopen the dance hall he once ran, was almost never finished.
Last October Mr Loach made an appeal for rare analogue editing equipment. Jimmy's Hall was put together in Soho in London after being made in the traditional way "shot on film, edited on film".
Disaster struck when Mr Loach and his team needed 25 rolls of "edge numbering" tape to synchronise picture and sound.
Calling the manufacturers would have blown the budget so producer Rebecca O'Brien talked the UK film industry trade magazine Screen into featuring the appeal.
And Pixar Animation studios outside San Francisco came to the rescue. Steve Bloom, a second editor on Monsters University, offered Pixar's entire stock of 19 rolls.
Jimmy's Hall will be Loach's 18th film to be shown at Cannes since he made his first appearance there in 1970 with Kes. He has been previously shortlisted for 11 Palme d'Or.
