Ghosts
2006
Ai Qin, a young Chinese girl from Fujian, China, borrows $25,000 to pay Snakeheads to smuggle her into the UK illegally so she can support her son and family back in China. Once in the UK, she becomes another one of three million migrant workers that are the bedrock of its food supply chain, construction and hospitality .. Read more
| Starring | Ai Qin Lin, Zhan Yu, Zhe Wei |
|---|---|
| Director | Nick Broomfield |
| Genres | Drama |
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Ghosts
Ai Qin, a young Chinese girl from Fujian, China, borrows $25,000 to pay Snakeheads to smuggle her into the UK illegally so she can support her son and family back in China. Once in the UK, she becomes another one of three million migrant workers that are the bedrock of its food supply chain, construction and hospitality industries. She lives with eleven other Chinese in a two-bedroom suburban house. With illegally forged work permits, they work in factories preparing food for British supermarkets. In their search for better paying jobs to repay their debts, they end up cockling in Morecambe Bay at night. On February 5th 2004 twenty three Chinese drowned in Morecambe, their families in China are still paying off their debts.
| Starring | Ai Qin Lin, Zhan Yu, Zhe Wei |
|---|---|
| Director | Nick Broomfield |
| Studio | PALISADES TARTAN |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 38 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama |
| Language | DVD: English, Mandarin |
| Subtitles | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 09 Apr 2007 Production year: 2006 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews
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Ghosts are the nicknames given to the British by Chinese immigrant workers in Nick Broomfields devised... read more on Time Out
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Most helpful member's review
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33 out of 35 people found this review helpful
Making a drama out of a crisis
There is a small band of British filmmakers (Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Michael Winterbottom) who you can always rely on to produce edgy, relevant and inventive cinema. Nick Broomfield is in this group. Just when it looked like his usual style (of following around, trying and often spectacularly failing to get close to his subjects) was wearing thin, Broomfield has pulled a rabbit out of the hat with this potent dramatisation of the drowning of 23 illegal Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay in 2004. The style is low-key, using real locations and a non-professional cast, many of whom were illegal immigrants themselves. Lead actress Ai Qin Lin gives the sort of raw performance that a million acting lessons can’t buy. Ghosts has some extremely disturbing moments, but Broomfield employs his usual brand of absurdist humour to at least make his film watchable, for example with the bumbling attempts by a gangmaster to bribe an employment agency for work (with boxes of chocolates!) and the moments of humour amongst the workers themselves (during a supermarket visit, finding that vegetables they may have picked are too expensive for them to afford). It may not have gotten the attention of Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake, Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley or Michael Winterbottom’s The Road to Guantanamo, but Ghosts might just be better than any of them.
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Most recent members' review
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Thought provoking
A must see film - horribly depressing but anyone who moans about immigrants taking our jobs should see what kind of jobs these poor people do - so we don't have to.
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News and features
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Battle For Haditha
- 28 Jan 2008
When politicians talk about the battle for hearts and minds in a conflict situation, they are usually talking about winning over the support of the local citizens caught in the war zone, though it could also apply to their own constituents, whose tacit approval allows the fighting to continue. In the Vietnam War, the phrase was a favourite of Lyndon Johnson, who believed that by supplying the Vietnamese with electricity and hope for a better future, the US could undermine support for the... Read more
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