Great Yarmouth

October 2019, three months before Brexit, the English coastal town of Great Yarmouth becomes a grim limbo for hundreds of newly arrived Portuguese migrant workers, all seeking low-paid work in the region’s turkey factories. Among them is Tânia, known as “The Mother of the Portuguese”, a former factory worker who has married an English hotel owner and now acts as the local fixer for incoming laborers.

Tânia dreams of becoming a British citizen and leaving this brutal world behind. But the arrival of a new group of desperate migrants shakes her fragile position of power, igniting a chain of events that threatens to consume her carefully built life.

With a background in visual arts and theatre, director Marco Martins crafts a deeply unsettling, noir-tinged social thriller that explores the hidden violence of economic migrancy. Shot on location in Norfolk, and based on real testimonies from migrant workers, the film reveals the bleak underside of post-Brexit Britain, where exploitation and modern servitude quietly thrive behind closed factory doors.

Beatriz Batarda delivers a fearless, career-defining performance in a role born of immersive research—including time spent working in actual poultry factories. With stark cinematography and eerie atmosphere, Great Yarmouth: Provisional Figures is an arresting meditation on power, desperation, and the cost of survival.