Year: 2006
Director: Nick Broomfield
Writers: Nick Broomfield, Jez Lewis
Cinematographer: Mark Wolf
Cast: Ai Qin Lin, Zhe Wei
Running Time: 96 min.
Blending documentary filmmaking techniques and dramatic fiction, Nick Broomfield’s Ghosts takes an intimate look at the plight of illegal immigrant workers. The film opens with the sudden incoming ocean tide in February 2004 that killed 23 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay. In the form of an extended flashback, Broomfield examines how one woman came to be there.
Based on true events, the film tells the story of Ai Qin, a young girl from Fujian, China. Ai Qin borrows $25,000 to pay a gang to smuggle her into the UK so that she can support her son and family back in China. Once in the UK, she becomes one of three million migrant workers who are the backbone of many of the country’s major industries. She lives with fifteen other Chinese people in a two bedroom house, working under the guise of an illegal work permit in a chicken-processing factory. After xenophobic neighbors trash the migrant house, Ai Qin and others head north to Morecambe Bay. However, the Lancashire “ghosts� of Morecambe, as the Chinese call the British, treat them even worse, abusing them physically and stealing their cockles. They are forced to work in the evenings and are only free from harassment in bad weather. This treatment eventually leads to the tragedy of February 2004.
Al Qin and the other principal characters are played by former Chinese illegal immigrants who draw on their own experiences to give passionate and authentic performances. Like Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, the film implicates powerful corporations in the workers’ fates, such as supermarket chains that constantly drive down the cost of food production.
Ghosts has the immediacy of a well-made documentary film, but Broomfield’s focus on specific workers allows for the emergence of a character arc that makes the news story personal and real. Al Qin’s story sheds new light on the migrant population and raises new questions about slavery in the 21st century.
