{"id":21824,"date":"2025-04-26T18:31:45","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T18:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/?p=21824"},"modified":"2025-10-18T12:30:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T12:30:49","slug":"youth-hard-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/youth-hard-times\/","title":{"rendered":"YOUTH (HARD TIMES)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"YOUTH (HARD TIMES)<\/h2>\n

| 2024 \u2013 226\u2032 \u2013\u00a0 A China\/France co-production, Documentary.
\nWritten by:\u00a0Wang Bing.
\nDirected by:\u00a0Wang Bing.
\nOfficial Selection Locarno\u00a0International Film Festival 2024, New York International Film Festival 2024, Toronto International Film Festival 2024.
\nIn Mandarin with English subtitles.
\nAn Icarus Films\u00a0release. |<\/span><\/p>\n

Youth (Hard Times) is the second installment in Chinese director Wang Bing\u2019s monumental series chronicling the lives of migrant garment workers \u2014 some as young as 15 \u2014 in the Zhili district of Huzhou City. Wang immerses himself in the lives of these workers, as they try to find potential dates, negotiate better piece-work rates with bosses, and sew, sew, sew, everything from padded jackets, to jeans, to pillows. Life seems hard, but stable. Then, a workshop owner brutally beats an employee and flees. With no boss and no pay, the workers organize to sell the shop\u2019s sewing machines and pocket the money. There are 300,000 migrant garment workers from surrounding provinces in Zhili, and while Youth (Hard Times) captures a sense of their struggles, it also highlights a growing solidarity. But the workers also recognize \u2014 as the film\u2019s sole interview makes clear \u2014 that ultimately they are up against the forces of capital and the state, and those forces won\u2019t hesitate to crush them if they think they are getting too far out of line. Intimate and evocative, Youth (Hard Times) is a striking portrait of young lives in an alien environment that’s radically different from the rural homes so many of them come from.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Watch Now<\/a><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YOUTH (HARD TIMES) | 2024 \u2013 226\u2032 \u2013\u00a0 A China\/France co-production, Documentary. Written by:\u00a0Wang Bing. Directed by:\u00a0Wang Bing. Official Selection Locarno\u00a0International Film Festival 2024, New York International Film Festival 2024, Toronto International Film Festival 2024. In Mandarin with English subtitles. An Icarus Films\u00a0release. | Youth (Hard Times) is the second installment in Chinese director Wang […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":21826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,127,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-on-digital","category-co-produced-by-france","category-documentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21824"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22155,"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21824\/revisions\/22155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}