Youth – Homecoming

The concluding part of Wang Bing's laconically monumental “Youth” trilogy about young textile workers in Zhili, China, also works excellently as a stand-alone documentary about social and economic inequalities in (pre-Covid) contemporary China. With a few protagonists, “Youth (Homecoming)” oscillates over the years between everyday life in sweatshops and rented rooms and its annual interruption for the Chinese New Year: the workshops empty out, card playing increases and many set off on the day-long journey to their home village. Weddings are celebrated, family obligations are fulfilled, and not everyone has a job waiting for them in the same workshop afterwards. The small film team measures the realities of life with a hand-held camera (and discreet puffing as they climb the stairs), while the filmmaker becomes a counterpart for the self-reflections of the workers in their twenties in some touching scenes. (Joachim Schätz)