It´s a free world: comments by the German students

In my opinon the movie shows how people from the rich countries trifle with people living in a poor country. Angie is typical of such people. It seems that she has no consience and no fear of losing everything, like her little son Jamie. She doesn´t care for people, is only interested in her own profit. Furthermore the movie shows the life of families, who escape from their homecountries and hope to find a job in the new country. They are living in bad homes and it´s their last chance to find work.
Adelina Steer


I couldn't see the beginning of the film but I'm of the opinion that Angie is a very ruthless woman. When she speaks with her father she disclaims the danger in which she is. Her father wants to appeal to her conscience but she doesn't want to hear that her job isn't a good job. She endangers her son when the Polish men don't get their money. But after that moment she knows in which danger she and her son are. I think she underestimates the job and the danger in the whole film.
Anna-Lena Kahle


In my point of view this film shows us the difficulties of immigrants to find a job. Most of the men coming to Angie have a go to get a job. But the problem is that there are more people than jobs. Many people have to go because they were too late and all jobs were assigned or they have no passports. On the one hand I think Angie does good things and it is hard for her to say to the men that she can't give everyone a job. But she has to decide who is gets work. I think it is fair to say that those who are too late do not get work. On the other hand, there is her family. She neglects her duty because she does not look after her son. And there she makes a big mistake. She shouldn’t help other people and forget her own child.
All in all I think Angie does a god job and I think she shows us a very human side to help immigrated people without passport, but there is also another side which is bad. She does not think about the life of her son and the life of the Polish man; the man loses his heart to her. She plays with his emotions. In my opinion the film delivers insight into the world of immigrant men trying to support themselves and their family. I think that this should not the task of Angie but rather of the government.
Christian Galert


I would like to write a comment on Ken Loach’s movie “It’s a Free World” which I saw two weeks ago with our Comenius class. At first I would just like to give you some of my impressions. In the beginning of the film I was quite impressed by Angie, the protagonist, since she seemed to be such a self-confident, witty and successful woman although I had been told by those having already seen the film that this rather sympathetic girl was about to end up as a criminal exploiter. The first thing that really surprised me about her was the fact that she had “parked” her child at her parents’ place without noticing what is going on in his life. At this point it became quite clear to me that there had to be something wrong with the way Angie was choosing her priorities.
Nevertheless I didn’t feel any estrangement during this time of the film; I even started to develop more compassion for her fate, because I got the feeling that she might be the one suffering from her lack of virtues at least as much as the people around her. But as the plot went on, I began to realize the destructive power lying in Angie’s intentions. As she was treating the workers more and more ruthlessly, I recognized that the negative aspects I had just expected to be only some of her more undesirable character traits had actually been the first part of a big, negative development of her entire personality. Having noticed that, I did not feel confused about her further actions any more but I was fascinated by the increasing speed of her personality’s development seemingly caused not only by the structure of her personality but also by the situation she was dealing with and the system of society.
What impressed me about the film was especially the connection between certain kinds of people and the capitalistic system. The film showed how much some structures in society are supported by people who have already suffered from them. What disappointed me was the missing solution in the end. Angie did not learn anything; her attitude towards her workers seemed to become even worse. I would have really liked to see how illegal workers have a chance to become a part of Angie’s society.
Esther Klann


Angie, the main character of this movie, is a very self-confident woman. She does what she wants to do and she seems to be a bit domineering because for example Rose does nearly always what Angie wants, also when she thinks it’s wrong. Nearly everything she does is self-serving. She helps the workers to get money on her own and she doesn’t help them to get a job or to get a better life, only to help herself.
At first she is always very strict with her workers, for example those who have no identification get no job, and neither does she care for the destiny of her workers. She hasn’t got any pity with them when they tell her their destinies. When she gets to know that they were hurt at work or lost a child she isn’t really impressed. In her view this isn’t her problem. But when they kidnap Jamie, she starts to think for a while because she realizes what it means to lose a child. So she gives to the workers what they want to have. She also shows some feelings when she helps the family who has to hide themselves by providing some false identification.
So it seems Angie learns from the things she does and that she changes, but in the end you can see she hasn’t really learned from it, because she doesn’t stop to place immigrant workers with firms and she is still self-serving when she takes money from a woman who needs her help. Also, she cares more for the workers than for her son. Jamie has got many problems but Angie doesn’t care. The only person who cares for Jamie is her grandfather. He also tries to convince Angie to search another job for her and to care more about her son. She loves Jamie but her job is more important for her. All in all you can say that Angie is a character who changes during the movie, she gets more and more calculating and the workers are only a way for her to get money.
Jasmina Tews


In my opinion, “It’s a free world“, directed by Ken Loach, is a good movie about the controversial topic of immigrant workers. A very important aspect of this film is the protagonists’ behaviour towards her family and friends on the one hand and towards the workers on the other hand. The question one has to ask when dealing with this topic is: When does the recruitment end and the traffic in human beings begin? Angie, whose parents are representatives of the working class, crosses this line at an early point. She starts with legal workers but soon wants more, begins to break the law and finds herself between two fronts. Her problems begin when the factory bosses refuse to pay for the work and the labourers make her responsible for their misery. Angie and her son Jamie are in danger.
In the course of the movie, she is getting more and more scrupulous. At a certain point even her friend Rose abandons Angie because of her terrible behaviour. The low point of her fall is when she betrays the inhabitants of a camp of illegal workers to the immigration authorities to make room for her own workers. Ironically, she extradites an Iranian family who she helped before, in my opinion the only really good thing she did.
Angie is an ambiguous character. In the beginning, I could understand her will to be successful in her business, but I got shocked again and again about the things she is willing to do to reach her aim. She neglects her son Jamie, who is not a well-looked after child, and hurts her father, who worked honestly for 40 years by saying that she does not want to be like him. He cannot understand his daughters’ callous work and tries to make her change her mind. When Angie’s son is kidnapped and she is attacked by furious workers in her own house, I expected that she would see her mistakes and would stop her work, but she does not. In the end, it becomes clear that nothing has changed in her mind.
Sarah Waldhauer


"It's a free world" is a very shocking and interesting movie, because it´s real. This movie shows us what happens every day in our countries. I know that this is an important theme, but I must say that I never saw a problem like this in my life. But the message of the movie is clear: Our countries have to change something! So this movie impressed me although it was a very sad one, because no one likes to see real dramatic facts of life presented in movies, through its plot, presentation and cast. I think it really deserves all the prizes it has got.
Sascha Remus


In my opinion Angie doesn’t really care about the workers, but it is an easy way to earn money. Moreover she doesn’t really care about the feelings of other people and doesn’t treat the workers very well. Instead of solving her own problems, she just ignores them. On the one hand that works for a short period, but on the other hand it doesn’t help her with her own problems but lets them become bigger.
The movie “It’s a free world” shows the difficulties of being an immigrant and is very helpful to understand the situation those people are in and what feelings they have. It also gives an impression how foreigners are treated in our society and everybody who watches it is confronted with the awful reality.
Angie is an example for the other point of view. She makes it obvious that not just immigrants have problems finding a job in these days. The everyday situation in our society, in which many people are without work, concerns everybody.
As a conclusion one can say that the movie deals with an issue which is very important and also shows different points of view. We should change some things in our society and should not grow apart. It shouldn’t matter what country we were born in or what language we speak best. Prejudices should be questioned by everybody. In my opinion that would be the only way to change things and that’s also the reason why I would warmly recommend everybody to watch movies like “It’s a free world”.
Saskia Sack

The theme of this film is capitalism. It's a little confusing that Ken Loach, the director of the film, takes Angie as the protagonist of the film. Because ruthless capitalism is mostly connected to big firms, which exploit their workers. But Ken Loach takes Angie, a mother without much money and also at first without the possibility to exploit asylum-seekers. But he shows in this film, how Angie changes her character from a woman who feels with the asylum-seekers to a woman who exploits them, only because she wants to earn more money. So he shows the way to become a capitalist person. And also how the lust for money can change the character.
Lukas Thum

My opinion is that Angie is a corrupt person who doesn't see the problems of the immigrants and only thinks about the money and the new business she created. Furthermore she disrespects the immigrants, for example, she shouts at the workers and “crams” them into a van. I think she does that because of her last job in Poland. There she had no good experiences with men. She doesn't care about her son Jamie because she is working all the time, so he must often stay at his grandparents'. Another aspect is that she calls the police to clear a little colony where immigrants live. This shows that she only thinks about her job and not about the people. My opinion on the whole film is that the plot is close to the truth. The idea to establish a business for helping immigrants to find work is a good idea because in reality immigrants mostly come to a country for a better life and a better job, but often they get no, or a bad job.
Nils Düppers