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It's a Free World... is a 2007 drama film directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty. Laverty won the Golden Osella (Best Screenplay) at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. An ambitious working class British woman, played by Kierston Wareing, tries to improve her lot by setting up her own business.

Plot

Angie (Kierston Wareing), a young woman frustrated after being fired from her thirtieth dead-end job, decides to set up a recruitment agency of her own, running it from her kitchen with her friend and flatmate Rose (Juliet Ellis). Angie is able to build a successful business, while also dealing with a neglected son who gets in trouble at school and parents who disapprove of her venture. She also has to keep reassuring Rose that they will become legitimate once the business is on a firm financial footing - they do not have a licence, but Angie at least insists on only hiring workers with papers, not illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, Angie becomes romantically involved with Karol (Leslaw Zurek), an English-speaking Pole who is in the same predicament as those Angie recruits. She also helps Mahmoud, his wife and two young daughters, much to Rose's distress. Mahmoud has been ordered deported, but he has gone into hiding to avoid a likely jail sentence back home in Iran.

Despite Rose's misgivings, Angie becomes increasingly eager to do whatever it takes to build the business. When Angie anonymously informs the government about a camp of immigrants, that is the final straw for Rose. She quits.

Disaster strikes when one employer refuses to pay twenty of Angie's workers the £40,000 they are owed. They blame her, and some of them take drastic action. They first kidnap her son Jamie (Joe Siffleet), then tie her up. After searching her flat, they take her profits (about a quarter of what they are due) and leave, but not before warning her that they want the rest or she will never see her son again. Soon after, Jamie shows up, unaware that the "policemen" he was talking to were fake. In the final scene, Angie abandons her scruples completely; she travels to the Ukraine to knowingly recruit illegal workers, offering to obtain forged papers for them.

Critical reaction

Though the film was not widely reviewed, it received generally positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 15 of 18 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.6 out of 10. Peter Howell wrote in the Toronto Star, "Newcomer Wareing delivers an award-worthy performance as the steely Angie, who is impossible to hate even as she descends deeper into the moral abyss." Among Rotten Tomatoes' "Top Critics", which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio programs, four of the six who reviewed the film gave it a "fresh" rating.

See also

• Ghosts, a 2006 film dealing with the much the same topic from the point of view of an illegal immigrant
• Gangmaster

References

1. Rotten Tomatoes
2. Peter Howell, It's a Free World thoughtfully explores human exploitation, Toronto Star, April 25, 2008
3. Rotten Tomatoes "Top Critics"

External links

• It's a Free World... at IMDb
• London Citizens Living Wage campaign

• 2007 films
• English-language films
• 2000s drama films
• Films directed by Ken Loach