Ghosts

This is film based on a true story. It is a disturbing portrayal of a clandestine world that is all around us. Ai Qin, a young Chinese girl from Fujian China, borrows $25,000 to pay the Snakehead gang to smuggle her into the UK so she can support her son and family back in China. Once in the UK she soon becomes another anonymous addition to the three million migrant workers that form the bedrock of the British food supply chain, construction, and hospitality industries. Ai Qin lives with fourteen other Chinese in a two-bedroom suburban house. With an illegally forged work permit, she labours in factories preparing food for British supermarkets. Along with her housemates, they search for better paying jobs to repay their debts and their journey leads them to cockle picking in Morecambe Bay. On February 5th 2004 twenty three Chinese drowned in Morecambe Bay. Their families in China are still paying off their debts. Ai Qin and the other principal characters are played by Chinese non-actors who have drawn on their life experiences to give passionate and authentic performances. The director, Nick Broomfield, has stepped out of his documentarian role, to create a gripping and compelling film, and an acute social commentary on the reality of migrant populations. ‘Ghosts’ is a moving and authentic story about modern-day slavery and its victims.