Teenagers forced to grow up quickly and spend their prime years wiling away at garment factories sounds like a grim reality, and it is, but in Youth (Spring), Chinese documentarist Wang Bing captures more than just the inherent tragedy of young labor. Here, they build friendships, find love, discover an affinity for their craft, stand up for themselves against exploitative bosses, and look for ways to have fun. Even if it’s just as simple as eating street food, spending the night at an internet cafe, or finding nice clothes, we’re with them in every way. Though it’s never explicitly political, the documentary makes you think about the conditions that put the kids there in the first place, such as our insatiable need for cheap and trendy clothes, governments turning a blind eye to child labor, and a skewed system that favors these above people’s—especially young people’s—well-being and welfare.
"The Chinese master of slow cinema covers life in some of the country's 18,000 garment factories in this sprawling but focused documentary."
— Caitlin Quinlan
"Wang’s impassive handheld camera waits for life to reveal itself, and for light to shine through the cracks in these concrete tombs. Like a Brueghel or a Bosch, Youth (Spring) is less an individual portrait than a bustling portrayal of types."
— Ben Croll
This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children's clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.
On the outskirts of Shanghai, textile manufacturing factories are filled with young workers hoping to earn enough to move out of their homes and start families on their own. Along the way, they build (and just as often fall out of) friendships and romantic relationships and deal with things like limited resources, crowded dorms, and a less-than-understanding boss.
Wang and his team’s dedication to trail these many kids around and weave a story you can follow over three hours, and possibly more. Wang has said that Youth (Spring) is the first of a trilogy he plans on making about the same garment community in Shanghai.
Before you mindlessly purchase another parka or sweater you don’t need, maybe put this on first and give it another think.
