As New Year’s break is coming, Zhili’s textile workshops are almost deserted. The few remaining employees are desperate to be paid for their trip home. From the banks of the Yangtze River to the mountains of Yunnan, everyone will be celebrating the festivities in their hometown, and performing the rituals of prosperity among their families. For Shi Wei, it’s also the opportunity to get married, as it is for Fang Lingping. Her husband, a former IT specialist, will have to follow her in Zhili after the ceremony. Learning is hard, but does not hinder the advent of a new generation of workers.
In the final chapter of his Youth trilogy, Wang Bing continues his unique work of documenting the daily lives of young people working in Chinese textile factories, whose time is literally sucked away by the workload, and whose incomes are so meager that the horizon is terribly crowded. An essential film on the throes of capitalism.
Screenplay
Wang Bing
Cinematographer
Liu Xianhui
Song Yang
Ding Bihan
Shan Xiaohui
Maeda Yoshitaka
Wang Bing
Music
Ranko Paukovic
Production
House on Fire
CS Production
Gladys Glover
Volya FilmsCoproduction : Arte France Cinéma
Les Films FauvesVolya Films
Eastern-Lion and Culture Media Co.
Ltd
Beijing Contemporary Art FoundationLe Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains
Born in Xi’an in 1967, Wang Bing studied photography at the Shenyang Fine Arts School and then joined the Film Academy. In the 1990s, he earned his living as a cameraman and assistant. In 2002, he directed West of the tracks, a nine-hour documentary on the demise of a huge industrial zone in China. After that, he continued to tackle subjects that were difficult to say the least: “anti-Rightist” repression, extreme poverty, life in a psychiatric hospital… In 2017, he won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for Mrs. Fang. In 2021, the Cinémathèque française will devote a retrospective to his work. In 2023, the Cannes Film Festival presents two new films by the director in official selection: Spring in competition, and Man in Black in special screening.
