The prolific director examines how the People’s Republic became the workshop for much of the world.

| Nov 10, 2023

It’s not a pleasant experience, but it’s an illuminating one.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 10, 2023

Like Wang’s “’Til Madness Do Us Part,” set in a mental hospital, the movie is an exhortation not to forget the unseen.

| Nov 9, 2023

Wang Bing doesn’t muster the formal strategies or the narratological scope that once allowed him (and us) to imagine broader implications for China’s future.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 13, 2023

The impact of the film is dampened for the young workforce depicted, who have — once again — been subsumed by a machine so much larger than themselves.

| Jun 26, 2023

This is less a social-issue documentary and more about an extreme existential poignance... These are young people in the prime years of their lives, but without the means or mobility to move forward, living years of monotony without a break.

| May 31, 2023

Youth (Spring) is a rare window into a world of life and work that might be specific but has clear echoes in scenarios the world over.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 25, 2023

The Chinese master of slow cinema covers life in some of the country's 18,000 garment factories in this sprawling but focused documentary.

| May 19, 2023

There has been a boom in films, both documentary and fictional, about garment workers. This is a major contribution to this sub-genre.

| May 18, 2023

“Youth (Spring)” deals in a form of anti-drama, in which each new strand becomes a depressing reiteration of the struggles and stunted horizons of the last.

| May 18, 2023

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.

| Original Score: B+ | May 18, 2023

It makes a demanding watch, in that it is genuinely, even oppressively immersive.

| May 18, 2023

It’s possible to be slightly overwhelmed by the scale and the social realist detail of the film, which was shot over a five-year period from 2014 to 2019, but the hope and idealism of the young workers is moving.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 18, 2023

The film is as exhausting as it is disturbing, and it’s relentlessness is in many ways the whole point as viewers spend 212 minutes looking at circumstances in which these young people, most in their late teens and early twenties, spend their daily lives.

| May 18, 2023