Wang Bing might not have released any new films in the last half-decade, but that is only because he’s been hard at work shooting his new trilogy. Captured between 2014 and 2019, the director’s new project documents the social and economic transformation of 21st-century China through the eyes of young migrant workers laboring in textile factories in the town of Zhili, outside Shanghai. Youth (Spring), one of two new films from the director to premiere at Cannes alongside Man in Black, will now get a theatrical release from Icarus Films starting on November 10 at Metrograph and the first trailer has arrived.
Ethan Vestby said in his review, “Wang Bing’s Youth (Spring) is the first of a supposed trilogy shot from 2014 to 2019 chronicling Millennial and Gen Z (consciously always listing the age when onscreen text introduces a new character) China. And judging by the three-and-a-half-hour runtime, it seems like many of them are toiling away in factory settings where pop music blasting off iPhone speakers or the radio (including a Pitbull song I Shazam’d) intersects in the sonic landscape with the running of the machines. Yes, in Godard’s fashion we have to endure the sounds, but Wang Bing’s mission statement is very different. After all, what’s eternally moving about the veteran documentarian is his deep earnestness.”
See the trailer and poster below.
Youth (Spring) opens on November 10 at Metograph.