Examining a deady trade

6:00am Friday 2nd February 2007

GHOSTS (cert tbc, 96mins) at Pictureville from today VERDICT: Four stars Documentary maker Nick Broomfield, famed for his portraits of Margaret Thatcher, Eugene Terre-Blanche and Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, turns his eye to the plight of illegal immigrants in this sobering feature film showing at the National Media Museum to commemorate the third anniversary of the death of 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay.

Featuring a heart-rending performance from Ai Qin Lin, a real-life Chinese immirant whose experiences mirror many of the events in this fictional tale, it's an attempt to examine the exploitation of workers in the UK's food industry.

Ai Qin, a single mother, leaves her young son in the care of family in Fujian to travel to Britain in search of work. The journey is costly and hazardous - she has to pay a snakehead $25,000 for the privilege of transporting her thousands of miles in the back of lorries - but when she arrives she quickly finds Britain isn't the great promised land.

Living under the protection of a gangmaster (Zhan Yu), she finds herself staying in an overcrowded terrace home in Norfolk while working in low-paid jobs on farms and at a meat-packing factory.

Hours are long and conditions grim - there are up to a dozen people in the house and the neighbours resent them - but it's comparatively pleasant compared to the misery the group endures when they are forced to move up to the North West to escape the attentions of the police and immigration officers.

Picking cockles in Morecambe Bay, they clash with local workers who say the Chinese are invading their turf. In desperation the migrants risk their lives by going out into the bay in bad weather.

Broomfield handles events naturalistically yet it's hard not to feel the impending sense of doom as the Chinese head out for the last time onto the sands.

If this film achieves nothing else, it's to be hoped it makes Britons seriously question the human cost of producing cheap food for supermarkets and restaurants. The families of the 23 people who died in Morecambe Bay still owe snakeheads an estimated £500,000 for smuggling their relatives into Britain.

Ghosts shows at the National Media Museum's Pictureville cinema until Thursday, February 8. For details visit www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

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