Synopsis
Individual and collective stories unfold in Zhili’s textile workshops, becoming ever more dramatic as the seasons go by. Fu Yun keeps making mistakes and is mocked by her colleagues. Xu Wanxiang can’t find his notebook, without which his boss refuses to pay him his wages. From atop a passageway, a group of workers watch their indebted boss beat up a supplier. In another workshop, the boss has taken off with all the money. The workers find themselves alone, robbed of the fruits of their labour. Hu Siwen tells the story of the 2011 Zhili riots: police brutality, imprisonment and fear. After bitter negotiations, the workers return home to celebrate the New Year.
Filmmaker
Wang Bing
He studied photography at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, an industrial city where, years later, he would film West of the Tracks. From there he moved on to the Beijing Film Academy, where he discovered the work of Antonioni, Bergman, Pasolini and Tarkovsky. In 2002 he made West of the Tracks, a nine-hour documentary about the decline of a vast industrial zone in North-East China. Since then, he has continued to work in the same mode. In 2014, he had a major show at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and in 2017 won the Golden Leopard at Locarno for Mrs. Fang. In 2021, Le BAL in Paris mounted an exhibition entitled “The Walking Eye”, and the French Cinematheque presented a retrospective of his films.
Filmography: Youth (Hard Times) (2024, D'A 2025), Youth (Homecoming) (2024, D'A 2025), Man in Black (2023), Youth (Spring) (2023, D'A 2024), Beauty Lives in Freedom, Gao Ertai (2018), Dead Souls (2018), 15 Hours (2017), Mrs. Fang (2017, D'A 2018), Bitter Money (2016, D'A 2017), Ta’ang (2016), Father and Sons (2014), Traces (short film, 2014), 'Til Madness Do Us Part (2013), Alone (2012), Three Sisters (2012), The Ditch (2010), Man With No Name (2009), Coal Money (mid-length film, 2008), Crude Oil (2008), Brutality Factory (short film, 2007), Fengming, a Chinese Memoir (2007), Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2003)
Awards and festivals
Special Mention of the International Competition
"Environment Is Quality of Life" Prize of the Junior Jury Award
FIPRESCI Award
SEMINCI VALLADOLID
Tiempo de Historia Award for Best Documentary
Poster
