Youth (Spring)

Acclaimed for his uncompromising approach, Wang Bing, one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, captures the daily dramas of young migrant workers in the Chinese textile industry. Cancelling the distance between viewers and protagonists, while carefully avoiding imposing any rhetoric, Bing dives into chronicling the lives of hard labour. What emerges is a vivid portrait of not only a regional economy, but also the love, tenderness, and friendship experienced by its young textile workers. These 20-year-olds have migrated from their hometowns to work for a period of time in the sweatshop capital of China. They share everything. They stay and eat in common dormitories, meet in corridors or on balconies, and above all, spend 15 hours a day at work with the constant hum of sewing machines forming the soundtrack of their destinies. A mosaic of young lives made, Youth (Spring) is the first chapter of a three-part documentary and is yet another masterpiece by Wang Bing.