Youth (Hard Times)

• Wang Bing
• 227 min
• France, Luxembourg, Netherlands
• 2024
• Documentary

One of the documentary genre’s greatest auteurs continues to steadfastly document young Chinese textile workers, offering with the second part of the Youth trilogy an even deeper insight into a reality the authorities wish to conceal.

In Zhili, over 300,000 people work in countless textile factories. They are young, often having traveled far from rural areas. In one scene from Youth (Hard Times), the second installment in Wang Bing’s trilogy that began with Youth (Spring) (GFF 2024), the monotony of work is broken by conflict: a factory manager assaults a supplier, while another manager has stolen wages, abandoning his employees. Far from home and the eagerly anticipated New Year celebrations, trapped within the machinery of global consumption, the workers begin to realize that only through solidarity can change be achieved.

- Rasmus Kilander

• Dokumentär
• Kapitalism
• Samhälle
• Familj
• Uppväxt
• Vänskap
• Stad