Always try to carve out space in my TIFF schedule for at least one of the duration-based, attention-span-challenging films that won't see much of a domestic theatrical release for commercial reasons. I can't personally imagine many distributors are frothing at the mouth to release a raw, 3.5-hour purely observational documentary on Chinese sweatshops, which is unfortunate because the theater truly is the setting that anyone is going to be most willing to actually engage with and meditate on what Wang Bing is doing as a filmmaker here. Which is essentially embedding himself in the lives of the everyday migrant young people of Zhili (one of the country's primary cities for privately-run sewing sweatshops, which he apparently documented for 5 years total) and authentically recreating their routines/rhythms cinematically. In this case, a bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings who try to spice up their monotonous 15-hour days running textile machinery and rundown, concrete dormitory living quarters by listening to romantic canto pop on their phones, fooling around with/getting into fights with their various co-workers and crushes, and ceaselessly bargaining for better wages/rates from bosses so they can afford to go out for dinner or hangout at internet cafes. Part of me wishes that Wang Bing's editing patterns felt like they had just a bit more focus to them but it's a hard point to argue when it's clear that the aimless handheld tracking of these kids and the lack of rhetoric around the diegetic hum of their repetitive existence is clearly the intent. And it's a filmmaking position so experimental and radical (to some I guess) that it generated far more walkouts than Harmony Korine did, though not many people will be reporting on that as gleefully and excitedly.