Ken Loachs latest piece. A return to making stories within the television medium, this film suits that aesthtic right down to the ground. A superb and timely tale with some stunning performances.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11024 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-10-01
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's a Free World, the latest collaboration from the Palme d’Or winning director Ken Loach, writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien is a drama rooted in the world of illegal employment in contemporary Britain. The story follows ill-educated Angie, who is tired of being messed around by her chauvinistic bosses at the recruitment agency where she finds Polish workers low paid jobs in the UK. When she walks out of her job, she has a point to prove to all those who know her. Angie begins work in a twilight zone between gang masters and employment agencies in a tale set against the background of flexible labour, globalisation, double shifts and lots of happy, happy consumers.

It’s a Free World was awarded the Best Screenplay at the 2007 Venice Film Festival and Loach and team won the coveted Palme d’Or in Cannes last year for The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which went on to be his most successful ever UK release. The DVD includes fantastic ‘extra’ material, including an exclusive Director’s Commentary by Ken Loach.

Synopsis
After losing her job at a recruitment agency, Angie decides, with the help of her flatmate, to set up her own illegal agency for immigrant workers in Britain. However, Angie's greed soon starts to surface. As with BREAD AND ROSES, acclaimed director Ken Loach focuses on labour issues and the exploitation of immigrant workers. This improvised, slice of life drama sees Loach continue his dedication to social realism and this, combined with the various documentaries Loach made in the 1980s, makes IT'S A FREE WORLD a powerful companion piece to Nick Broomfield's GHOSTS, which looked at the exploitation of Chinese illegal immigrants in Britain.

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Customer Reviews

"You think your children are more important than ours?"
This is a film which should be viewed by all the Daily Mail readers who think that all this country's problems are caused by immigrants and Asylum seekers.

This film shows how the poor folks who enter this country are treated, how they are effectively treated as slaves on a "starvation wage". Exploiters think the exploited should be thankful for what they've got.

This is the true picture of the immigration situation in the UK. Immigrants don't sponge form this country - unscrupulous business men exploit them in the most demoralising ways.

The film deals with this from an interesting angle. A woman who has been 'screwed over' in every job she is in. After being fired from an agency who entice foreign workers into the UK on the back of false promises of a regular wage, she decides to set up her own agency.

Angie is a single mother, hard working, she wants the best for her son. But she too exploits the foreign workers and coins it in whilst they go for weeks without receiving a wage.

Rose is her flatmate/business partner - and has a more solid moral conscience.

Things aren't black and white in this film - you empathise with Angie and are desperate for her to come up on top. But you also want her to get her comeuppance for adding to the problems of desperate people and treating them as her business assets rather than human beings.

Things get ugly for her, but the violence and also compassion by those who seek vengeance adds to the fullness of this film.

I personally have always been a left-wing thinker and supported the plight of the foreigners who are mistreated, abused, and used as a hate vehicle by the media. This film will hopefully open the eyes of those who think that 'Johnny Foreigner' is coming over here and `stealing our jobs'.

We should be disgusted by the conditions imposed on the forgotten workforce who are hidden and mistreated in order that we can buy cheap products at the super markets and clothes shops.

Angie's dad is the voice of reason in this film; he is disgusted by what his daughter is doing. It is her dad who uses the phrase "starvation wage' - Angie is in denial and convinces herself that she is doing good, even accusing him of being a rightwing National Front thinker when he is actually voice his opinion from the left!

The realism of this film gives it an extra boost. The acting doesn't look like acting, it looks like real people in real situations. At points I was convinced that some of the roles aren't played by actors, but people in the actual role. Whether this is the case or not, Loach has managed to pull off another classic showing real life in a way the viewer can believe.

There - I managed to review a Ken Loach film without using the word "Gritty" once! Doh - I used typed it!!!

NO WAY BACK
There are few very truly English films in this country and I am glad to add one more to their list ( "Billy Elliot", "Dirty Pretty things", "Secrets and Lies" , "Remains of the Day", "Howard End" etc ).
"It's a free world" is a touching story about the fight for a "better" life. Being on the "other side" of the border some 10 years ago, I myself witnessed the way how the applicants' money was taken (in advance) by the corrupted agencies, promising rainbows and other miracles in this beautiful country. This country is beautiful and I love it. However the humans, living in this country carry the same human nature and it is far from perfect! Anjie, her dad, her son, her colleague, her Polish "interpreter" and even the social workers strive for "better" life.
For me the last scene of the film makes the film ! Please, watch it carefully!

Having been worked on the "immigration front" since 2004, I knew and still know so many foreigners who barely speak English and I always asked myself - how come these people come to the UK, if they do not SPEAK English and why they NEVER learn to speak English? I believe you will find the answer of this question whilst watching "It's a free world"

Be careful: this is a biting Ken Loach
That film has to be seen all over the world. It shows how in our globalized world the migration of people is perfectly organized and managed outside all legality with the accomplice-ship and cooperation of most governments or national services in the western countries concerned by these migrations. Here London, England. The volunteers (!?!) are essentially coming from the European Community (Poland) but also non members states from eastern Europe (Ukraine) and some countries going through a crisis like Iran and Iraq. The human beings are cattle as soon as they put their first toe in the system. They pay heftily for their passage first, just like the Jewish community had to pay for the passage of the Jews who were deported to Auschwitz. Then they will be exploited at two levels. First by the skyrocketing rents they pay for one fourth of a room or one fifth of a caravan. Second they will get some work every morning for the day and with no certitude of anything: no contract, no health insurance, no guaranteed payment of the miserable salary, no guaranteed schooling for the children. Everything is done outside any official declaration, evading taxes and all controls. And no serious service is doing anything to find out and bring things back in line. But the worst part is, though some men are behind this kind of slave market, the main flesh-eating character is a white woman, a false blonde, divorced with an 11 year old son abandoned to her own parents. She has a black associate who will finally drop out when the other trespasses beyond the narrow line between exploitation and slavery on one side and cattle- or even garbage-processing on the other. One day she will call immigration authorities to report a clandestine camp in order to get it emptied for her load of slaves that is arriving on the following morning. The black woman will be replaced and the whole forced-labor merry-go-round will start again and amplify its operation. The only advantage of being exploited by a woman is that young males will have to perform some personal service to the female slave-manager to get work on the following day. A film to be seen urgently. I was divinely surprised by the causticity of Ken Loach I was considering as slightly tamed before seeing this film. He can still bite, the old pit-bull.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines