Jeunesse (Le Printemps)

Immersion in the Chinese city of Zhili, entirely devoted to the textile industry: there are almost 18,000 sewing factories employing 300,000 workers. This extensive document is devoted to a few small, self-managed factories, where young people barely out of their teens work. Needle convicts riveted to machines thirteen hours a day, they are paid by the task. Over and above the repetitive and alienating work, the film focuses mainly on the young people who provoke each other, fall in love, bicker and bargain bitterly for their pay with those in charge. Although the small contractors they work for are often unscrupulous, pay issues can be debated and judged by the whole community.

Continuing his exploration of the forgotten people of history, Wang Bing delivers here the first part of his future Spring trilogy, from which emerges an infectious energy, despite the alienating conditions of work, and whose protagonists have only one dream: to open a factory of their own...


Les âmes mortes (BM19), Mrs. Fang (BM18), Ta’ang (BM17), A l’ouest des rails – Rails (BM15), A l’ouest des rails – Rouille I (BM15), A l’ouest des rails – Rouille II (BM15), A l’ouest des rails – Vestiges (BM15), Crude Oil (BM15), L’argent du charbon (BM15), L’homme sans nom (BM15), Traces (BM15), Til Madness Do Us Part (BM15), Alone (BM13), West of Tracks (BM04)

Pyramide Distribution / France / Alberto Alvarez Aguilera / alberto@pyramidefilms.com