Filmed between 2014 and 2019 and whittled from 2,600 hours of footage, the exceptionally intimate documentary premiered at Cannes earlier this 12 months, the one Chinese language-language movie in competitors and one which broke a 20-year drought of nonfiction movies competing on the pageant. (The final one was Michael Moore’s Palme d’Or winner Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004.) The director has stated it’s the primary of a trilogy that can collectively run some 10 hours.
The movie is organized in blocks of 20 to 25 minutes, beginning within the workshops, which quantity some 20,000 and on common have fewer than 20 staff every. Towards the deafening thrum of equipment (and blaring pop music, presumably to maintain the employees awake) are petty scuffles, infantile horseplay, and coy flirting. They smoke, chatter, and boast, their palms a flurry of exercise at stitching machines all of the whereas. Ultimately financial realities come to the fore because the low-wage laborers set up to press their less-than-amenable bosses for extra pay. (Wages are computed on a per-piece foundation and paid out each six months; staff don’t know the speed of every merchandise till the tip.)
Wang then strikes upstairs into their dingy and seemingly unheated (going by the coats they by no means take off) residing quarters. There, of their treasured few off-hours, the employees take turns within the shared washrooms; unexpectedly slurp bowls of low-cost noodles; exhaustedly scroll on their smartphones; have romantic assignations; and interact within the stray cake struggle. Like mercurial younger individuals the world over, they fuck round.
%2520_%2520Courtesy%2520Icarus%2520Films%2520Still%25202.jpg)
Photograph: Courtesy Icarus Movies