His film, "Youth", the longest of the competition, is the result of a patient work of immersion and shooting, from 2014 to 2019, in factories in the city of Zhili (east), 150 km from Shanghai.

"In this village where I settled, it is little by little, over time, that I got to know all these small workshop owners and that I managed to get from them the maximum freedom I could get and even a very strong support," he said in an interview with AFP in Cannes.

"I was completely free to do what I wanted," he continues, but "it took me a while, about six months to really get to be free of my movements."

Filming in the homes of small bosses, organized in an anarchic way, rather than in the large factories usually portrayed by the media allowed him to create a stronger bond with his subjects, and to penetrate their intimacy more easily. And this, despite the language barrier, the filmmaker does not speak the same dialect.

These patiently woven bonds of trust allow this great name of the documentary, accustomed to the works-river since the nine hours of "West of the rails" (2003), on an industrial complex, to show the intimacy never seen of young Chinese employed from 8:00 to 23:00 in these small factories.

The camera is totally forgotten and delivers unforgettable scenes of a youth who lives in dilapidated dormitories but also looks like all the others, with its small and big love dramas, the time that must be killed. Added to this is exhaustion at work or embryos of social struggle, in a relentless system, where one is paid by the piece, and every six months.

In total, the 55-year-old director now living in Paris has racked up a mountain of 2,600 hours of rushes, organized during months of editing.

The film presented at Cannes is only a first part, Wang Bing explaining that he imagines delivering two more, for a final work of 9:30.

"The shooting went smoothly for me with the authorities," says the director, who is however pessimistic about the possibilities of shooting again in China in the future.

"It's going to be more and more difficult, because China is entering a phase of its history where denunciation is at the heart of society," he said. "The Chinese as a whole are facing this reality."

© 2023 AFP