The title of Nick Broomfield's new film is deliberately ambiguous; ghosts being the disparaging term the Chinese use to describe white westerners and (possibly) a reference to the invisibility of poorly paid, unprotected non-British workers who work in slave conditions in the food industry.
Three years ago such workers made the news, briefly, when 23 illegal Chinese immigrants drowned in Morecambe Bay while digging for cockles late one evening. As the waters rose around them, they rang their families to say goodbye, unaware they'd have been better off ringing 999.
Their deaths inspired the notorious Broomfield to make a film in which he re-enacts the events leading up to the disaster. In this he is assisted by a cast of amateurs, many of whom are themselves illegal immigrants, and the film's star Ai Qi Lin, a non-professional, whom we follow through various low-skilled jobs in the food industry in a bid to pay back the $25,000 she borrowed from 'Snakeheads' to smuggle her into the country.
There are times when she must wonder why she bothered, forced as she is to live in a two-bedroom house with 11 other Chinese immigrants, all of whom are sworn at and spat on by their neighbours. The landlord is no better: he overcharges them.
And yet, for all that., despite the horrific ending, Ghosts isn't entirely bereft of hope. After all, if nothing else, its impact is such that it should force us all to question our own appetite for cheap food and embarrass supermarkets into altering the way their products are produced.
