Vancouver Premiere

“An urgent portrait of youth organizing against their exploitation … Rarely has one of [Wang Bing’s] films so nakedly called out the collusion between state and commerce to ensure the powerlessness of average citizens.”

Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

This second installment of Wang Bing’s monumental Youth trilogy resumes his immersive, observational chronicle of China’s garment-factory workers of the Zhili district, a labour force of more than 300,000 migrants, some as young as 15, earning poverty wages for untold hours on the sweatshop floor. Spring, the preceding chapter (which screened here in early 2024), acclimated the viewer to the backbreaking pace and too-young faces of the unregulated industry. Hard Times gently recalibrates that approach, widening the scope—it follows subjects home to their rural provinces, some of the country’s poorest—while arriving at a more dramatic structure. Tension becomes the organizing principle here, as when a worker misplaces his product-tallying pay book without which management refuses to compensate him, or when a boss assaults a supplier then flees, his employees left with scant recourse but to sell off factory equipment to cover lost wages. Hard times indeed. Homecoming, Wang’s conclusion to the nonfiction epic, screens in February.

In Chinese regional dialects with English subtitles

“Riveting … Shot in a present-tense vérité style, it stitches together micro-stories into a larger narrative in which negotiation can’t undo exploitation.”

Nicolas Rapold, The New York Times

“Delivers a thorough cinematic vision with a precise political edge. The documentary serves as an ode to worker solidarity and mobilization.”

David Cuevas, POV Magazine
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