Youth (Spring)Youth (Spring)

The town of Zhili, about 95 miles from Shanghai, is a center for the children's garment industry. Workers in their teens and early twenties come from surrounding provinces to live in sparse, trash-strewn concrete dorms in the same buildings as the small factories where they spend their days sewing leggings, shorts, fluffy skirts, and jackets with Mickey Mouse hoods. A remarkably intimate documentary filmed over five years, YOUTH takes us into these independent workshops - many on a street named Happiness Road. A successor to Wang Bing's 2017 film BITTER MONEY, YOUTH is not an exposé of the garment industry. Instead, it draws us into the lives of its subjects - young people who don't make their beds, worry about having the latest iPhone, and occasionally engage in a food fight. Like so many of us, they're doing the best they can in a challenging environment.