Legendary UK filmmaker Ken Loach’s apparently final film is the story of what happens when a group of Syrian refugees are settled in a dying mining village in England’s northeast.

At the start of ‘The Old Oak’, the name of the film and the village pub, the refugees face racism and hostility when they arrive in a community still impacted by the miner’s strike of the 1980s.

While many villagers are hostile to the newcomers, the local publican TJ Ballatyne, played by Dave Turner, is more compassionate and strikes up a friendship with a young woman called Yara, played by Ebla Mari, whose camera was taken and smashed by a local man.

The camera was a gift from her father, who is still in Syria, and it contains photos from Yara and her family’s journey to England, including the refugee camp they lived in.

The film focuses on how the two communities, both experiencing their own circumstances of dislocation, pain and fear, can come together and find hope.

The film was written by long-time Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, who had heard stories about refugees from Syria who were sent to these communities.

“In these places you had a workforce that was very skilled, very strong, strong trade unions and great traditions that were abandoned,” Mr Loach told film media.

“We knew there was a story waiting to be told, which is the consequences in the mining villages and communities that were abandoned.

“The shops closed, the social infrastructure disappeared, things like doctors, a lot of them disappeared, the schools were sparse, churches closed, community centres closed,” he said.

These communities saw families leave and others moved in because of cheap housing.

“People were angry and embittered. And alongside that anger and bitterness there’s the mining tradition of solidarity, internationalism and welcoming people,” Mr Loach said.

He said he learned of refugees from Syria being sent to these communities, with more refugees sent there than any other area in Britain, per head of the population.

“The right-wing government don’t want the right-wing press complaining that there are refugees in middle-class areas,” Mr Loach said.

“When they first arrived, there was quite a lot of hostility. You have the arrival of a community that has nothing but what they stand up in, and a suitcase, with the trauma of war and often family members killed,” he said.

“They arrive in a strange country, not knowing the language, and the question is ‘how do these two communities get along’?

“Which part of the mining community will win through? The memory of solidarity, or the current bitterness and anger. Put them together and that produces the story.”

Loach said he was determined to also tell the “truth” of the Syrian experience and used the Syrian actors in the film to guide him.

“I said to them, whatever I ask you to do, it must be what you were doing in real life,” he said.

“And if I ask you to do something, however small, that isn’t what you would do, then tell me and we will change it, because it’s your truth.”

“Much more important that it is your truth in the film than that some particular incident happens exactly as we planned it. That’s not important. The truth is important.”