Bread and Roses

Bread and Roses (2000) is a Ken Loach drama you can watch online on iFILM. Maya crosses the Mexican border without papers and makes it to her older sister Rosa in Los Angeles. A job turns up fast — cleaning a downtown glass tower for next to nothing, with no contract and a supervisor who fires people on a whim.

The service workers' union sends in an organizer, Sam Shapiro, to carry its janitors' rights campaign into the building. Maya listens, drawn to both the cause and to Sam himself. Rosa wants nothing to do with the risk; her husband is sick and a pink slip would sink the household. Once the cleaners decide to make noise, management answers with threats and works to turn one worker against another. Pilar Padilla plays Maya, with Adrien Brody as Sam a couple of years before The Pianist.

Loach built the film around the real Justice for Janitors actions that swept LA in the 1990s, casting non-professionals drawn from the migrant workforce itself. The result is blunt and unsentimental — one for viewers who go in for social realism and an honest look at what dignity costs. Stream Bread and Roses (2000) online on iFILM.