''American Factory'' () is a 2019 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, about Chinese company

Fuyao Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co., Ltd. () is a manufacturing company in the People's Republic of China, engaged in the production of float glass, automobile glass and construction glass. It is one of the largest auto glass producers in the world, ...

's factory in

Moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris ( regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice sh ...

, a city near

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

, Ohio, that occupies Moraine Assembly, a shuttered General Motors plant. The film had its festival premiere at the

2019 Sundance Film Festival The 2019 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 24 to February 3, 2019. The first lineup of competition films was announced on November 28, 2018. Films U.S. Dramatic Competition * '' Before You Know It'' by Hannah Pearl Utt * '' ...

. It is distributed by

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

and is the first film acquired by Barack and

Michelle Obama Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She was the first African-American woman to serve in this position. She is married t ...

's production company, Higher Ground Productions. It won an

Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...

Overview

In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

Production

Filmed from February 2015 until the end of 2017, Reichert and Bognar were granted filming access by

at both their

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

and Chinese plant locations. They were inspired to make this film as the events they aimed to depict were taking place in the same Moraine Assembly plant once occupied by General Motors, which was the central topic of their 2009 Oscar-nominated documentary short '' The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant.'' The

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

language portions of the film were facilitated by the inclusion of two Chinese filmmakers, Yiqian Zhang and Mijie Li, one or both of whom would travel to Ohio monthly. The directors credit these two as essential in providing a connection to the Chinese subjects depicted in the film.

Style

The filmmakers implemented a fly-on-the-wall documentary filmmaking approach, in which no dialogue external to the subjects of the film is included, and the sounds of the factory and the dialogue of the workers is prioritized. In order to make focal such an audio/visual approach, the filmmakers implemented the use of

lavalier microphone A lavalier microphone or lavalier (also known as a lav, lapel mic, clip mic, body mic, collar mic, neck mic or personal mic) is a small microphone used for television, theater, and public speaking applications to allow hands-free operation. They a ...

s to effectively balance worker dialogue amid noise emanating from the factory's machinery. The

voice-over Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non-diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations. ...

narration provided by the factory workers was often recorded at their respective homes, independently from the factory setting. According to Bognar, implementing the film's narration in this way to create an effect of depicting a worker's inner monologue.

Reception

After the film's screening at Sundance, it garnered wide acclaim. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews from critics, with an average of . The site's consensus reads: "''American Factory'' takes a thoughtful – and troubling – look at the dynamic between workers and employers in the 21st-century globalized economy." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

it has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on 23 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". David Edelstein of ''

New York Magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker' ...

'' wrote: "It's a great, expansive, deeply humanist work, angry but empathetic to its core. It gestures toward the end of the working world we know – and to the rise of the machines." Eric Kohn at ''

IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...

'' described it as "A fascinating tragicomedy about the incompatibility of American and Chinese industries." The film won

Best Documentary Feature Best or The Best may refer to: People * Best (surname), people with the surname Best * Best (footballer, born 1968), retired Portuguese footballer Companies and organizations * Best & Co., an 1879–1971 clothing chain * Best Lock Corporation, ...

at the 2020 Academy Awards as well as the

Independent Spirit Award The Independent Spirit Awards (abbreviated Spirit Awards and originally known as the FINDIE or Friends of Independents Awards), founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass ...

for the same category. It also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program.

Accolades

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:American Factory 2019 documentary films 2019 films American documentary films Primetime Emmy Award-winning broadcasts Chinese-language American films Documentary films about automobiles Documentary films about globalization Documentary films about labor relations in the United States Films about the labor movement Netflix original documentary films Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners Sundance Film Festival award winners Montgomery County, Ohio Economy of Dayton, Ohio Documentary films about Ohio Higher Ground Productions films Films directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert 2010s English-language films 2010s Mandarin-language films 2010s American films Films about companies