More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002), documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili, near Shanghai, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes, Locarno and Venice film festivals, respectively. Taken together, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time, space and the material fabric of our lives. 

Youth (Homecoming) Qingchun: Gui

The final installment of the Youth trilogyzooms in on a handful of workers as they return to their villages for the Lunar New Year, meanwhile zooming out spatially from Zhili’s garment workshops to China’s vast countryside. After seeking payment of their owed wages, Mu Fei and Dong Minyan board a packed train to Yunnan and take a van up a hazardous mountainside road. In homes decorated with giant Chairman Mao portraits, their parents speak of illnesses and injustices, debts and expenses. Firecrackers, a confetti gang, bride-carrying and karaoke create an exuberant atmosphere at Shi Wei’s and Liang Xianglian’s wedding. From the southwest mountains, the film moves to the lower Yangtze River to celebrate the God of Prosperity and another wedding banquet. After the holidays, the bride Fang Lingping takes her husband to Zhili and teaches him to sew. The last third of the film revisits familiar characters from Spring and Hard Times such as Lin Shao and Chen Wenting, no longer teenagers in love but young parents, uncertain how the cycles of seasonal labor will shape their children’s future.

Directed by Wang Bing

France/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2024, DCP, color, 160 min. Mandarin with English subtitles

General Admission Tickets $10, $8 Non-Harvard student, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20.

Tickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website.