Youth (Hard Times)
In the garment workshops of Zhili, individual and collective stories unfold, becoming more earnest as the seasons pass by. Fu Yun makes mistake on mistake and is sorely mocked by his comrades. Xu Wanxiang loses his paybook and his boss refuses to pay his wages. In one workshop, the boss flee town. The workers find themselves alone, cheated out of the fruits of their labour. Hu Siwen recounts the 2011 riots in Zhili: the police brutality, imprisonments and fear. After some tough bargaining, the workers return home to celebrate the New Year.
In association with France Culture, introduced by a discussion between Wang Bing and Lucile Commeaux, critic and journalist on France Culture’s “Regard culturel”.
WANG Bing
Born in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, in 1967. 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 and Pasolini. He especially admires Andrei Tarkovsky. Through the 1990s he made
a living working on various films as assistant director or cameraman, but, feeling that the mainstream
filmmaking and television world would not let him develop as he wished, he decided to start producing
his own films.
CS Production, Gladys Glover Films, House On Fire productions
Les Acacias
Shan Xiaohui, Song Yang, Ding Bihan, Liu Xianhui, Maeda Yoshitaka, Wang Bing
Ranko Paukovic
Dominique Auvray, Xu Bingyuan
Les Acacias
