Channel 4 is pleased to announce that acclaimed British director Ken Loach’s riveting new drama, IT’S A FREE WORLD…, will be broadcast in late September. The 90 minute film stars newcomers and Loach discoveries, Kierston Wareing and Juliet Ellis.

IT’S A FREE WORLD…, the latest collaboration from the Palme d’Or winning director Ken Loach, writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien, is a drama rooted in the world of illegal employment in contemporary Britain.

Angie has little formal education, but has three vital ingredients surging through her bloodstream; energy, wit, and ambition. She’s tired of being messed around by her chauvinistic bosses at the recruitment agency where she finds Polish workers low paid jobs in the UK. When she walks out of her job, she has a point to prove to all those who know her.

Angie begins work in a twilight zone between gang masters and employment agencies. This is a tale set against the background of flexible labour, globalisation, double shifts and lots of happy, happy consumers: us.

Ken Loach commented “The scandal of exploitation is known – for those who want to know. So it’s not breaking new ground in terms of, ‘Shock horror, look what’s happening.’ What we’re more concerned about is just to challenge this prevailing wisdom that ruthless entrepreneurship is the way that this society should develop – that everything is a deal, everything is competitive, acquisitive, market-orientated and that’s the way we should live. It seeks out exploitation. It produces monsters.”

Channel 4 Head of Drama, Liza Marshall added: “Ken Loach is a unique talent in British filmmaking, and Channel 4 is delighted to welcome him back to television after a succession of hugely acclaimed films. IT’S A FREE WORLD… fits perfectly with Channel 4’s tradition of broadcasting distinctive, provocative and authored single dramas that take an intelligent look at the way we live today.”

IT’S A FREE WORLD… is the latest in a long working relationship between Loach and Film4 on such films as Bread and Roses, My Name is Joe, Carla’s Song, Ladybird Ladybird, Raining Stones and Riff-Raff. Loach and team won the coveted Palme d’Or in Cannes last year for The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which went on to be his most successful ever UK release.