Factory

Gong Chang

Acclaimed director Hao Zhou journeys into one of China’s vast factories around the time of the pandemic to detail the impact of global supply chains and coercive business practices on workers’ lives.

An unflinching examination of labour, surveillance and global capitalism, Factory presents a chilling portrait of working life inside technology firm Lenovo’s factory in Wuhan during and after the COVID-19 outbreak. The factory, a self-contained world providing accommodation, meals and even mental health support, is also a site of control and forced compliance. Zhou’s film confronts the systems that exploit human labour to sate the demands of global consumers. Revealing that health data is used as a tool of surveillance and how methods of efficiency become forms of exploitation, Factory is less a pandemic story than a piercing examination of how authoritarian governance and global supply chains converge. Machines hum and bodies move in endless repetition as the film demands from its viewers the very time the workers are denied. Posing pressing questions about the future of labour, Factory is a haunting reflection on the human cost of international supply chains and the pursuit of endless growth.