It's a Free World...

After losing her job, Angie starts a small recruitment business from her kitchen, teaming up with her friend Rose. They tap into the desperation of immigrants seeking work and quickly turn the makeshift office into a busy operation. Orders arrive fast and the venture expands with remarkable speed, built on the hopes of workers chasing a better life and on Angie's keen appetite for success. The drama centers on a pragmatic entrepreneur who sees opportunity in others' vulnerability, raising hard questions about morality, loyalty, and the cost of rapid growth. The film keeps a tight focus on character and consequence, showing how ambition can outrun safeguards and alter ordinary lives, with consequences for Angie and others.

Directed by Ken Loach with a screenplay by Paul Laverty, It's a Free World released in 2007 as a sharp social realist drama about labor and immigration in Britain. It spotlights Kierston Wareing in a breakout performance, with Juliet Ellis and Lesław Żurek among the supporting cast.

Box office data is not provided in the available information, and the film's commercial performance is not publicly disclosed here, making it unclear how it fared outside film festival and niche release circuits. Some audiences encountered it through art house screenings.

It sits within Ken Loach's tradition of social realism, spotlighting how market forces collide with human needs. Kierston Wareing's Angie stands as a provocative portrait of ambition under pressure, sparking discussion about immigrant labor, recruitment ethics, and the human cost of rapid growth, even as families hope for a better future.

Critics offered mixed but thoughtful responses, praising the film's brisk storytelling and frank look at power dynamics, while some found its moral terrain hard to resolve. Core themes include class, exploitation, resilience, and the uneasy line between opportunity and responsibility, all rendered with Loach's no frills realism and a focus on ordinary people.