Youth (Homecoming)

Wang Bang’s magnum opus on modern China culminates with this deeply human portrait of life beyond the factories. Experiencing momentary escape from the Dickensian conditions of their sweatshops, Chinese garment industry workers from Zhili – some of whom we’ve followed through Youth (Spring) (MIFF 2023) and Youth (Hard Times) (MIFF 2025) – return to their provincial hometowns for national holidays, family gatherings and weddings. These celebrations serve as a huge relief from as well as a harsh reminder of their wage-slave lives, which they can never fully escape. As the young subjects come face to face with the family members they support, both love and a sense of crushing responsibility linger in the air. Revered documentarian Wang Bing completes his Youth trilogy with a final chapter shot through with hope and despair. Premiering in competition at Venice, Youth (Homecoming) takes a different – though no less empathetic – angle from the triptych’s earlier depictions of the people whose labour makes the wheel of global capitalism go round; here, Wang captures the moments of relief that can be grasped before they are, once more, sent back to create the comforts the developed world depends upon. “The West may choose to see Asia’s sweatshops as a special case situated in a world apart. But Wang’s brutally revealing trilogy urges us to think about economic exploitation and the nature of labour in the globalised world.” – Screen Daily