Factory Complex trailer [documentary on gender, labor, and transnational capitalism]

Описание: From South Korean textile factories in the 1960s to modern service industries and Cambodian manufacturing plants, female workers reveal how economic miracles are built on women's invisible labor and enduring exploitation through raw testimonies and poetic visuals.

SYNOPSIS

South Korea’s rapid economic rise in the late 20th century amazed the world, but at what human price? This visually striking documentary takes viewers into the lives of female laborers across generations, from 1960s textile workers enduring grueling hours and poor conditions, to today’s flight attendants, cashiers, call center staff, and non-regular employees facing insecurity and humiliation.

Through intimate interviews and poetic cinematography, the film captures the voices of women describing unsafe environments, harassment, poverty wages, and exhausting hours that left many physically and emotionally broken. These voices highlight the sacrifices and systemic inequalities masked by narratives of economic growth.

The narrative extends beyond Korea to contemporary Cambodia, where female textile workers face strikingly similar exploitation and violent suppression of protests. This transnational journey exposes how globalization merely shifts the location of abuse rather than ending it, raising critical questions about the enduring dynamics of exploitation under neoliberal capitalism.

Ultimately, it honors these women’s resilience and voices, urging viewers to confront the human price of progress and the ongoing need for fairer work worldwide.

INFORMATION

1 hour 35 minutes | English subtitles | HD (1920×1080)
South Korea | 2014
Director: Im Heung-soon
Producer: Kim Min-kyung
Production Company: Bandal Doc

AWARDS & FILM FESTIVALS

1. Silver Lion, 2015 Venice Biennale
2. Official Selection, 2016 Art of the Real, Film at Lincoln Center
3. Nomination for Wide Angle Documentary Competition, 2014 Busan International Film Festival
4. Official Selection for Internationales Programm, 2015 DOK Leipzig – International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film
5. Nomination for Golden Goblet Award Competition, 2015 Shanghai International Film Festival
And 20+ more.

HIGHLIGHT ENDORSEMENT
“A powerful document of the abusive, dangerous, grueling, and humiliating conditions under which “unskilled” female laborers in South Korea and Cambodia have suffered, and their attempts to receive better treatment.”
Film at Lincoln Center

“This award-winning film is two things at once: a history of women workers in Korea and the different issues they have faced throughout the decades, and also an abstract and beautifully realized work of art.”
Darcy Paquet, Hankook Ilbo

“Through an innovative style which crisscrosses between actual interviews with working women and experimental images, the film traces the women’s past and present, their inner side and the landscape, and weaves, with no restrictions of ideology, the story of all working people in this age when work is happiness and also fear.”
Han Yun-jeong, The Kyunghyang Shinmun