Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

tigerfish50 When single mother Angie is fired from her job at an employment agency, she teams up with flat-mate Rose, and they venture into London's black market economy. They supply illegal immigrant labor to sweatshops and construction projects, before expanding into providing accommodation for her workers at exploitative rents. When Rose starts feeling queasy about the amorality of their schemes, Angie bamboozles her with empty promises of improved behavior in the future. Writer Paul Laverty creates a credible and complex character, as his protagonist ruthlessly exploits society's victims, but later surrenders to a compassionate impulse and helps a family of Iranian political refugees. Angie's life becomes a catalogue of broken relationships, betrayals and brushes with authority, until her back-alley empire eventually implodes. Her journey can be seen as a metaphor of Britain's colonial rapaciousness and its repercussions, when retribution arrives in the form of shadowy individuals seeking payback. The gritty story is complemented by an excellent cast, and a break-out performance from Kierston Wareing as Angie. Needless to say, Ken Loach navigates through this seedy netherworld with his customary skill, but it's a rough ride through a bleak landscape.

rowmorg Another slice of low life from Ken Loach, this is an "issue" picture dealing with trafficking in stateless workers. It's not the first, but this one features the astonishing Kierston Wareing, who landed this leading role after appearing briefly in just one TV episode. Kierston can play the pushy cow in the workplace, the caring neighbour and mother in private, and the tender lover in the bedroom. Strutting around getting her new business together, rounding up clients and welcoming curious workers, in all-black leatherette motor-bike togs, she makes this otherwise rather ordinary little drama stand out. When the going gets rough, she is utterly believable as the plucky fighter standing up for herself against an all-male world. When things go pear-shaped, she is the vulnerable female, but also the protective mother, as determined as any tigress. Throughout, we are rooting for her, even when she is obviously losing her way in a messed-up workaday world. At the end of the film, she is doing the wrong thing in order to do the right thing, and Loach has shown up brilliantly the conflicted people who traffic in the misfortune of their fellow workers. Definitely see this picture, if only to relish Kierston Wareing's maiden performance.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU That film has to be seen all over the world. It shows how in our globalized world the migration of people is perfectly organized and managed outside all legality with the accomplice-ship and cooperation of most governments or national services in the western countries concerned by these migrations. Here London, England. The volunteers (!?!) are essentially coming from the European Community (Poland) but also non members states from eastern Europe (Ukraine) and some countries going through a crisis like Iran and Iraq. The human beings are cattle as soon as they put their first toe in the system. They pay heftily for their passage first, just like the Jewish community had to pay for the passage of the Jews who were deported to Auschwitz. Then they will be exploited at two levels. First by the skyrocketing rents they pay for one fourth of a room or one fifth of a caravan. Second they will get some work every morning for the day and with no certitude of anything: no contract, no health insurance, no guaranteed payment of the miserable salary, no guaranteed schooling for the children. Everything is done outside any official declaration, evading taxes and all controls. And no serious service is doing anything to find out and bring things back in line. But the worst part is, though some men are behind this kind of slave market, the main flesh-eating character is a white woman, a false blonde, divorced with an 11 year old son abandoned to her own parents. She has a black associate who will finally drop out when the other trespasses beyond the narrow line between exploitation and slavery on one side and cattle- or even garbage-processing on the other. One day she will call immigration authorities to report a clandestine camp in order to get it emptied for her load of slaves that is arriving on the following morning. The black woman will be replaced and the whole forced-labor merry-go-round will start again and amplify its operation. The only advantage of being exploited by a woman is that young males will have to perform some personal service to the female slave-manager to get work on the following day. A film to be seen urgently. I was divinely surprised by the causticity of Ken Loach I was considering as slightly tamed before seeing this film. He can still bite, the old pit-bull.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

tiana90_9 I often feel like giving a film a ten somehow weakens the review and arguments but in my humble opinion this latest work from Ken Loach is absolutely spot on! The element I applaud the most is its nuances and subtlety. Nothing is black and white, the characters are complex and display at times total disregard for humanity and at others touching empathy, thereby making a stronger point of the complexity of the situation at hand. The plot is relatively simple, but small exchanges between the characters that seem irrelevant bring a great deal of humanity to the film. Kierston Wavering is absolutely magnificent as Angie and every single other "actor" (professional or not) featured is spot on. A moving, honest, brave yet depressing masterpiece!