“A valuably tactless, steady, clear-eyed look at the tragedy and cruelty of the new globalised serfdom.” - The GuardianIn February 2004, 23 illegal Chinese immigrants were drowned while cockle picking in the northwest of England, cut off by the incoming tides on an empty sandbar in the darkness of the night. It was this incident that momentarily shed grim light on the realities of the English workforce and the illegal immigrants who make up so much of it. Documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield's brutish account exposes the shame of a modern-day slavery that is ignored by an unsympathetic government and greedy enforcers. Most tellingly, he takes one of the survivors of the February 2004 incident and uses her as an ‘actor' to recreate the journey from China to the mudflats of England's north.