Vancouver Premiere

“Youth (Homecoming) is not only the shortest entry of his ten hour saga; it’s also the most abundant, ending the series on a high note.”

Ben Croll, IndieWire

At once a culmination and a jumping-on point, the third and final volume in Wang Bing’s astonishing Youth saga adopts an overhead view of the garment-industry apparatus while honing in on the lives of just a few of its young characters. The ubiquitous sewing factories of Zhili, China’s ​“city of children’s clothing,” cease production during New Year’s break, providing a window for its migrant workforce to return home to remote villages—but not before negotiating wages, or pressing to get paid at all. Wang presents in Homecoming an almost abridged summation, or variation, on the major themes of Youth, observing the cyclical nature of sweatshop labour at the point where it ends and begins anew. In the margin between, Wang offers an up-close portrait of provincial family life (including a joyous, community-gathering wedding celebration), a respite, however fleeting, from the demands of capital controlling the fate of these desperate youths.

In Chinese regional dialects with English subtitles

“Wang’s cyclical account of young people caught in constant survival mode comes to a poignant close here, giving definitive shape and meaning to his enormous act of observation.”

NYFF 2024

“Youth (Homecoming) stands on its own, a genuinely sorrowful film about how deeply the churn of industry has worked its way into people’s bones.”

Siddhant Adlakha, Variety
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