Lise Mailland's impressions of 'It's a Free World'

It’s a Free World

The film begins with the main subject: recruitment. It takes place in Poland, where Angie (the main character) recruits people for her firm, called ‘Core Force Recruitment’. Then, still in Poland, her boss makes her a proposal which she refuses, but it seems it was a sexual proposition. When she goes back to the UK, he tells her that she has lost her job. She feels angry with him, as she knows it is not her fault: she is not responsible for this situation.

In Poland, she met a Polish worker who manages to come to the UK. During the film, we learn that they are together but for Angie, this situation is not good because she has not enough time to stay with him.

She feels fed up with the way workers are treated: she knows that recruiting agencies don’t care if workers have papers or not. Besides, she is sick of being ordered by her boss and earning very little money that’s why she decides to set up her own business, managing a temporary job agency. She starts this agency with her friend Rose. Her parents disagree with her job because they would like her to have a secure job (she has actually changed her job many times) to take care of her only child. But she does not care about what they said and established her office in her flat and the agency in a friend’s pub.

So workers start to come early in the morning and the meeting point is in the yard behind the pub. If people arrive too late, or if they don’t have the right physique, then they she refuses them. In this way, she is becoming greedier and greedier: she manages to earn money by renting rooms to workers and not giving them their salary at the end of the month. The more she does not pay them, the more she gets into trouble. Her son gets caught up by the Polish workers who only want to get their money. They threaten to hurt her child if she does not pay them. They accuse her of keeping the money she owes them (and they find it) instead of paying the workers.

But, at the same time, she meets an Iranian family: she wants to help them because they are refugees and are afraid of being picked up by the police. Nevertheless, this period lasts very little time. It ends because a lot of her employees are refugees. She always wants to earn more and more money and does not care about how she does it, that’s why her friend Rose disagrees with these choices and they argue. Angie stills continue the business but Rose stops.

Later, she does not hesitate to denounce a refugee’s camp in order to get the camp back and to transform it into a place where her workers can live, without forgetting the work conditions.

At the end of the film, we can see that Angie is in the same situation as at the beginning: the scene is the same, with her own firm ‘Angie’s recruitment’ with a rainbow. The thing which has changed is the fact that she is alone instead of working with Rose and that she is independent, because it is her own business.

Debate: during the debate, we talked about the problems of refugees. We also talked about their living conditions: they are treated as slaves since they have little money and bad flats. The two women belong to Amnesty International, an association which takes care of the refugees and helps them to obtain the papers they need to stay in France.

This debate was interesting because many people talked: students and teachers (for instance the Romanian teacher Mariana who talked about her own experience) and the subject is very topical nowadays. Even if few people are interested in this situation, they should be aware of it.

Unfortunately, to my mind, the debate was too short.

I really enjoyed watching this film. It was interesting because thanks to films like this we can see the world as it really is. Refugees take great risks to reach our countries and their lives are not a bed of roses once they arrive! I find this theme should be spoken about more because the problem is getting worse and people don’t care enough about it.