Ghosts

The dreadful plight of illegal immigrants to the U.K. has been highlighted in a number of films, including Michael Winterbottom's 'In This World' and Channel 4's miniseries 'Sex Traffic'. While Nick Broomfield was motivated by the tragedy of the deaths of Chinese cockle-pickers in Morecombe Bay to abandon his normal style (of self-led investigative documentary) to film a dramatic reconstruction of their story. He handles the transition in styles well, and his film is realistic, harrowing and marked by striking photography of Britain's ugly-beautiful underbelly. Particularly good is the portrayal of the gang-master, a villain, yet also a victim at the same time. If there's a criticism its that, judged purely as drama, the story is almost too harrowing, with no hope of redemption at the end. But of course, the events depicted actually happened and, with the exception of the final chapter, continue to happen: this is an important film, and one that asks awkward questions for those of us rich off the backs of migrant labour.

I'm disappointed that only one comment on Ghosts has been posted since the film's release. It is, I think, an important film that deserves commentary.

On the whole, I'm not a fan of Nick Broomfield and his usual technique of 'authored' or 'performed' documentaries, in which he often plays a starring role. As a consequence, I've never before been to a theatrical screening of one of his films. In the early sequences of Ghosts, the approach is very much like a television documentary or a reality TV show. As I don't like reality TV, my interest was held less by style and more by the details of the narrative and by the chance to compare the notion of a long journey of illegal immigration with that shown in Michael Winterbottom's In This World. Broomfield doesn't display Winterbottom's creativity in conveying the horrors of the journey and I began to worry that the film wouldn't take off. However, it does, largely because the central characters become more 'narrativised' -- by which I mean that they become more like characters in a fictional narrative and I began to feel for them and their terrible predicament.

The film is based on real events, so in a sense the audience knows what is going to happen, if not precisely what will happen to individual characters. Nevertheless, I found the last 20 minutes both riveting and terribly distressing. I've walked in Morecambe Bay, but not out into the estuary where I would never go without an official guide. Knowing how dangerous something is makes the suspense even worse for me.

Overall Broomfield and Jez Lewis are remarkably restrained in not trying to present a black and white world of wrong and right in the film. The story is told from the perspective of the Chinese workers. I haven't read all the details of the trials of the Chinese gangmaster and his accomplices which took place in 2006, but at first glance, the film offers something that is not a conventional crime/exploitation story and more an affecting personal drama. There is relatively little 'plot' and much more about developing understanding for the characters. Unfortunately I suspect that not many audiences will see the film in cinemas and when it appears on TV, it will be lost amidst Channel 4's reality TV wallpaper. I hope not, because it deserves to be seen and discussed.

This DVD had been resting on my shelf for some months - I kept putting off viewing it because I feared it would be a depressing watch. On the contrary, I found it to be hugely involving and, at times, extremely funny. It is incredibly moving (you will have to have a pretty hard heart not to cry at some scenes) but the eye-opening and potentially 'worthy' message is communicated with a humanity that is motivating and positive rather than simply depressing.

Nick Broomfield tells the story with subtle skill. The illusion of documentary reality is almost perfect but this does not distance the viewer from the characters - we enter into their thoughts and feelings partly through the excellent and subtle use of music and partly from utterly convincing performances.

The title of Nick Broomfield's new film is deliberately ambiguous; ghosts being the disparaging term the Chinese use to describe white westerners and (possibly) a reference to the invisibility of poorly paid, unprotected non-British workers who work in slave conditions in the food industry.

Three years ago such workers made the news, briefly, when 23 illegal Chinese immigrants drowned in Morecambe Bay while digging for cockles late one evening. As the waters rose around them, they rang their families to say goodbye, unaware they'd have been better off ringing 999.

Their deaths inspired the notorious Broomfield to make a film in which he re-enacts the events leading up to the disaster. In this he is assisted by a cast of amateurs, many of whom are themselves illegal immigrants, and the film's star Ai Qi Lin, a non-professional, whom we follow through various low-skilled jobs in the food industry in a bid to pay back the $25,000 she borrowed from 'Snakeheads' to smuggle her into the country.

There are times when she must wonder why she bothered, forced as she is to live in a two-bedroom house with 11 other Chinese immigrants, all of whom are sworn at and spat on by their neighbours. The landlord is no better: he overcharges them.

And yet, for all that., despite the horrific ending, Ghosts isn't entirely bereft of hope. After all, if nothing else, its impact is such that it should force us all to question our own appetite for cheap food and embarrass supermarkets into altering the way their products are produced.

A shaming portrayal of the way the UK benefits from cheap labour of illegal immigrants. The format is feature film, rather than fly on the wall documentary that audiences are used to, from Nick Broomfield.

It's superbly done and Broomfield has made it easy on the viewer with a very straightforward blow-by-blow account. The camera seems to go right to the heart of the lives of these unfortunate people, without being overly sentimental.

It's an arresting film, very beautifully composed and with a soundtrack that only assists in forcing you to quietly question why this happened.

It would do little Britain some good if this film was part of the national curriculum, in 'our' schools.