Presenting Partner
Signature Partners
New York Premiere
American Factory
Tribeca Critics' Week
| USA | 109 MINUTESDocumentary
In 2008, the General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio shut down, leaving thousands of Ohioans out of work. Years later, Chairman Cao Dewang, CEO of the Chinese company Fuyao Glass, opens an American wing of his sprawling, multi-billion-dollar company in that very same plant, hiring thousands of Dayton locals and kicking off one of the strangest tales of international labor and cross-cultural contact committed to screen.
Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s American Factory is a wry look at what happens when America’s economic vulnerability comes toe-to-toe with a new era of ambitious Chinese expansion. It’s a tale threaded through with cinema verite scenes of union meetings and management pow-wows, and on and on, until what emerges is a difficult, often funny, but altogether urgent look at the future of labor. An unsettling question hangs over the company and the story: Will America’s Fuyao Glass employees succeed in unionizing?
How and why, and whether the upper management is able to do anything to stop it, serve as the backbone for American Factory. It’s a bit of everyday political drama that has implications, not only for these workers’ lives, but for how we come to understand the broader disconnects between laborer and boss--and by extension, America and China.
—K. Austin Collins
Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s American Factory is a wry look at what happens when America’s economic vulnerability comes toe-to-toe with a new era of ambitious Chinese expansion. It’s a tale threaded through with cinema verite scenes of union meetings and management pow-wows, and on and on, until what emerges is a difficult, often funny, but altogether urgent look at the future of labor. An unsettling question hangs over the company and the story: Will America’s Fuyao Glass employees succeed in unionizing?
How and why, and whether the upper management is able to do anything to stop it, serve as the backbone for American Factory. It’s a bit of everyday political drama that has implications, not only for these workers’ lives, but for how we come to understand the broader disconnects between laborer and boss--and by extension, America and China.
—K. Austin Collins
Cast & Credits
Directed by
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert are Academy Award®-nominated documentary filmmakers whose work has screened at Sundance, Telluride, SXSW, and other major festivals, as well as on the PBS series Independent Lens, which won a Primetime Emmy Award®. Their films have, for the most part, told stories of typical citizens grappling with questions of agency and how to have a decent life.
Director
Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert
Executive Producer (Main Credit)
Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann
Producer
Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, Jeff Reichert, Julie Parker Benello
Cinematographer
Steven Bognar, Aubrey Keith, Jeff Reichert, Julia Reichert, Erick Stoll
Editor
Lindsay Utz
Contacts
Print Source
Press Contact
Courtney Ott
Cinetic Marketing
New York, New York 10001
Phone: 646 230 6847
courtney@cineticmedia.com
Cinetic Marketing
New York, New York 10001
Phone: 646 230 6847
courtney@cineticmedia.com
* Rush Tickets available at venue except for
Beacon Theatre
Beacon Theatre
Rush will be offered when advanced tickets for a screening or event are no longer available at venues
other than Beacon Theatre.
The Rush system functions as a standby line that will form at the venue approximately one hour prior to scheduled start time. Admittance is based on availability and will begin roughly 10 minutes prior to program start time. Rush Tickets are the same price as advance tickets and are payable upon entry.
The Rush system functions as a standby line that will form at the venue approximately one hour prior to scheduled start time. Admittance is based on availability and will begin roughly 10 minutes prior to program start time. Rush Tickets are the same price as advance tickets and are payable upon entry.
