Synopsis
As New Year’s break is coming, Zhili’s textile workshops are almost deserted. The fewn remaining employees are desperate to be paid for their trip home. From the banks of the Yangtze River to the mountains of Yunnan, everyone will be celebrating the festivities in their hometown, and performing the rituals of prosperity among their families. For Shi Wei, it’s also the opportunity to get married, as it is for Fang Lingping. Her husband, a former IT specialist, will have to follow her in Zhili after the ceremony. Learning is hard, but does not hinder the advent of a new generation of workers.
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)
Poster
