TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES
Ken Loach |
It's a Free World!
Ken Loach
2007 - United Kingdom / Italy / Germany - 1h36
Screenings :
wednesday 24 - 10:00 am - Centre de congrès - Auditorium - followed by a debate with the film directors
friday 26 - 5:00 pm - Pathé - 2
Angie is fired from a recruitment agency for public misconduct. So she teams up with her flatmate, Rose, to set up a recruitment agency in their kitchen. With so many immigrants looking for work, the opportunities are massive, especially for two young women in step with the times.
“Angie is a pure product of liberal politics, devoted to entrepreneurial energy, the cult of business and individualism. She is formatted to carve out a place in the sun at all costs, whatever it takes. The world of her father, a docker who lived through the heyday of trade unionism, has been replaced by the world of money, the reign of competitiveness and every man for himself. With the invention of a devastating concept: flexibility, which encourages job insecurity.
“Employed in a London recruitment agency which gets cheap labour from Eastern Europe, this serious girl worked selflessly until the day she got sacked for fighting back against one of her bosses who had sexually assaulted her. She decided to set up her own recruitment agency. Angie has had ten jobs in ten years, and only knows one way of getting by: not minding stepping on other people's toes to make a profit. Loach's film shows how, to get her slice of the pie, she becomes a link in a cynical system that denies trade union benefits and human rights.
Angie is initially generous, but loses her moral compass and becomes complicit in people smuggling. Telling the story from the point of view of the “exploiter” rather than that of the exploited, Loach clearly shows how this change takes place.
(...)
“There is something implacable and despairing in this observation of the exploitation of the poor by the poor, each working for their own survival, dog eat dog, each with their own reasons. One of Angie's reasons is her situation as a single mother, determined to prove to society (her family, the administration) that she has a stable income and a credible social identity in order to bring up the son she is denied custody of.
“Although he is on the side of the workers, Ken Loach does not judge Angie, but rather the system that enables her selfishness and gives her an excuse to commit the intolerable.” (Jean-Luc Douin; Le Monde)
“Employed in a London recruitment agency which gets cheap labour from Eastern Europe, this serious girl worked selflessly until the day she got sacked for fighting back against one of her bosses who had sexually assaulted her. She decided to set up her own recruitment agency. Angie has had ten jobs in ten years, and only knows one way of getting by: not minding stepping on other people's toes to make a profit. Loach's film shows how, to get her slice of the pie, she becomes a link in a cynical system that denies trade union benefits and human rights.
Angie is initially generous, but loses her moral compass and becomes complicit in people smuggling. Telling the story from the point of view of the “exploiter” rather than that of the exploited, Loach clearly shows how this change takes place.
(...)
“There is something implacable and despairing in this observation of the exploitation of the poor by the poor, each working for their own survival, dog eat dog, each with their own reasons. One of Angie's reasons is her situation as a single mother, determined to prove to society (her family, the administration) that she has a stable income and a credible social identity in order to bring up the son she is denied custody of.
“Although he is on the side of the workers, Ken Loach does not judge Angie, but rather the system that enables her selfishness and gives her an excuse to commit the intolerable.” (Jean-Luc Douin; Le Monde)
CAST AND CREW
Cast : Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis, Leslaw Zurek, Joe Siffleet, Colin Coughlin
Screenplay : Paul Laverty
Cinematography : Nigel Willoughby
Editing : Jonathan Morris
Production : Filmcoopie, BIM Distribuzione, Buksfilm
French distributor : Diaphana