Ai Qin, a young Chinese girl from Fujian, China, borrows $25,000 to pay Snakeheads to smuggle her into the UK illegally so she can support her son and family back in China. Once in the UK, she becomes another one of three million migrant workers that are the bedrock of its food supply chain, construction and hospitality industries. She lives with eleven other Chinese in a two-bedroom suburban house. With illegally forged work permits, they work in factories preparing food for British supermarkets. In their search for better paying jobs to repay their debts, they end up cockling in Morecambe Bay at night. On February 5th 2004 twenty three Chinese drowned in Morecambe, their families in China are still paying off their debts.
Production Channel 4 Television Corporation [gb]; Film4 [gb]; Head Gear Films [gb](executive producer); Lafayette Films;
Cast Names Rhys Bond; Colin Brown; Dave Bryan; Ping Chen; Andrew Dodd; Shang Falin; Shalin Gallagher; Roger Gray; Graham Harris; Marc Hoeferlin; Dafydd Hughes; Stewart Jones; Darren Kasselves; Tao Li; Ang Sheng Lin; Qin Rong Lin; Sean Lin; Paul Ovenden; Paul Plausin; Paul Andrew Richardson; Terry Sergeant; Mark (XLIII) Thomas; Jiannan Tian; Paul Wadsworth; Shu Ping Wang; Michael Whitehead; Li Qing Yang; Kay Briar Fox; Kan Jin Chen; Graca Costa;
Release Date 2007-01-01 * (Sundance Film Festival) 2007-05-31 (Seattle International Film Festival)