American Factory
Cultures collide. Hope survives.
In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.
Documentary
7.2
501 reviewsRuntime: 110 min.
Budget: N/A
Revenue: N/A
Release Date: 2019-08-21
Director(s): Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert
Production: Higher Ground, Participant, Field of Vision
Languages: Mandarin, English
IMDB: tt9351980
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rsanek★ 8/109/19/2020
You always read about "cultural differences" as being something that must be overcome when dealing with international projects, but that language always felt so abstract to me; if anything, it seemed like more of an excuse as to why things might be delayed rather than a real problem. This doc did a great job of telling the story of what that concept really means in practice. _American Factory_ shows you how much friction is created due to the incongruity in cultural ideas about work ethic, personal freedoms, power, and process. I think that was the highlight of the story for me. For me as an American, there were also feelings of frustration about having a country that doesn't have an answer for these people; their life goes from making $29 working for a US company, to making $12 for a Chinese company. The anti-labor-organizing that we see from Fuyao in the film isn't even unique to this being a China-based company; our home-grown Amazon does a pretty good job of hiring "labor relations" firms to weed out union organizing. I find myself agreeing with one of the speakers at a UAW event captured in the film: we've allowed our country to become one where the rich can exploit the poor, and it would be pretty cool to take it back.