
Directing
Wang Bing
Born 1967-11-16 · Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China
Wang Bing (Chinese: 王兵; pinyin: Wáng Bīng; born 16 November, 1967; Xi'an) is a Chinese documentary director, often referred to as one of the foremost figures in documentary film-making. Wang is the founder of his own production company, Wang Bing Studios, which produces most of his films. He began his career as an independent filmmaker in 1999. Discovered in 2003, "West of Tracks", an enormous documentary work of more than 9 hours, has garnered great success internationally. In addition to his feature documentaries, he is also active in video installation, fiction film and photography. His movie on Chinese labour camps, "The Ditch", was included in the 67th Venice Film Festival (2010) as the film sorpresa. His movie "Youth (Spring)" was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival (2023). Tie Xi Qu, Wang's 9 hour epic documentary of industrial China, was considered a major success. Tie Xi Qu went on to win the Grand Prix at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film and was shown for the first time in Spain at the Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival. Wang's film Fengming, a Chinese Memoir, premiered at both Cannes and Toronto in 2007. Crude Oil premiered at the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival. Since then, his films became a staple at every prestigious international film festival. 2017's Mrs. Fang was awarded the Golden Leopard at the 70th Locarno Festival. French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman dedicated a long epilogue to Wang Bing in his 2012 book, Peuples exposés, peuples figurants. He reflects on the social fate of images thoroughly analyzing Wang's 2010 Man with No Name, writing that the director, as a humble portrait artist of a single rural worker, manages to represent the whole of China's people (as well as people from all over the World) "not through his past, nor his ideas, nor his name, nor his place in society, but through the simple gestures with which he works at his solitary life", as opposed to the common epic portraits of national identity based on military prowess, war heroes and manifest destinies.
Acting credits
7.1With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.
Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema
2014
NRSardinia 2017. The starting point for the film is one of the most loved lands in the Mediterranean, using it to enter into the world of cinema. Ten international masters of cinema explain Fiorenzo Serra's images, one of the greatest post-war Italian documentary makers. His masterpiece, "The last punch of Earth", will be analyzed and debated, a film which examined Italian change and European reflection.
Uno sguardo alla Terra
2018
5.0This correspondence between Spanish auteur Jaime Rosales and critical chronicler of contemporary China Wang Bing is divided into three short films each consisting of documentary observations.
Cinematic Correspondences: Jaime Rosales - Wang Bing
2009
6.7Korean film critic Jeong Sung-il’s camera explores the work of Wang Bing, a Chinese director who won international fame with his film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks. Jeong’s attempt to pry into Wang’s filmmaking secrets leads to the question: “What is film?”
Night and Fog in Zona
2018
NRWang Bing is one of the greatest documentary-makers alive today, and his films offer a very insightful overview of the transformations occurring in Chinese society. Here, Dominique Auvray conducts an interview that, in addition to the biographical information, focuses above all on the relationship with things unsaid: Wang Bing attempts to do justice to his theme and the testimonies he’s gathered, but he stumbles over the words, struggling to keep his emotions in check. The pain of tackling history shows through the awkward speech.
Wang Bing, Tendre Cinéaste Du Chaos Chinois
2019
NRA portrait of the filmmaker and documenta 14 artist Wang Bing (winner of the Locarno Festival's Golden Leopard for "Mrs. Fang"). Wang Bing shot his previous films digitally, for example "15 Hours" which consists of a single 15-hour long shot. In Kassel, he bought his first Bolex (16 mm camera). With a stopwatch, he tests how long he film can film at a time.
Portrait Wang Bing
2017
Behind the camera
5.0Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Venice 70: Future Reloaded
2013
NRModern China. On a bright sunny day, in a building site, an industrial complex is being deconstructed. Night falls. The ruins of the factory are empty and silent. Phantoms appear, voices are heard, telling their stories....From the anthology The State of the World.
Brutality Factory
2007
NRModern China. On a bright sunny day, in a building site, an industrial complex is being deconstructed. Night falls. The ruins of the factory are empty and silent. Phantoms appear, voices are heard, telling their stories....From the anthology The State of the World.
Brutality Factory
2007
5.9The Ta'ang or Palaung people, an ethnic minority living in the mountainous area between Myanmar's Kokang region and China's Yunnan province, have historically suffered many forced migrations due to war. When their survival is threatened again in 2015, thousands of them flee across the border. Filmmaker Wang Bing accompanies them and becomes a privileged witness to a human story that is both a modern reportage and a mythical epic.
Ta'ang
2016
5.9The Ta'ang or Palaung people, an ethnic minority living in the mountainous area between Myanmar's Kokang region and China's Yunnan province, have historically suffered many forced migrations due to war. When their survival is threatened again in 2015, thousands of them flee across the border. Filmmaker Wang Bing accompanies them and becomes a privileged witness to a human story that is both a modern reportage and a mythical epic.
Ta'ang
2016
8.0Gao Ertai (1931) is an artist, teacher, philosopher who, in the 1950s, was imprisoned in the Jiabiangou Labour Camp. The film works as a diptych with Fengming, the confessional story of another victim of reprisals, and closes a vast film series on those who disappeared.
Beauty Lives in Freedom
2018
7.8A detailed look at the gradual decline of Shenyang’s industrial Tiexi district, an area that was once a vibrant example of China’s socialist economy. But industry is changing, and the factories of Tiexi are closing. Director Wang Bing introduces us to some of the workers affected by the closures, and to their families.
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks
2004
7.8A detailed look at the gradual decline of Shenyang’s industrial Tiexi district, an area that was once a vibrant example of China’s socialist economy. But industry is changing, and the factories of Tiexi are closing. Director Wang Bing introduces us to some of the workers affected by the closures, and to their families.
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks
2004
6.9This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children's clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.
Youth (Spring)
2023
6.1In a fast growing city of East China, migrants have been arriving and living for a dream of a better life. But what they find there is little opportunities and poor living conditions that push people, even couples, into violent and oppressive relations. Xiao Min, Ling Ling and Lao Yeh are some of the characters of this bitter chronicle of today China.
Bitter Money
2018
7.1The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp called Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong on the grounds that they were "rightist elements". The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who coped with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
The Ditch
2011
7.1The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp called Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong on the grounds that they were "rightist elements". The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who coped with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
The Ditch
2011
7.1The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp called Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong on the grounds that they were "rightist elements". The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who coped with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
The Ditch
2011
8.2In this enveloping second part of the Youth trilogy, shot between 2015 and 2019, Wang Bing deepens his vérité portrait of a generation struggling to survive on meager wages amidst a nation’s economic expansion, emphasizing the distrustful, increasingly combative relationship between workers and management.
Youth (Hard Times)
2025
7.6Wang Bing concludes his monumental Youth trilogy in expansive fashion, giving ever wider scope to the lives of migrant workers in Zhili’s textile factories as they plan to go to their remote hometowns to visit their families and celebrate the festivities for New Year’s break.
Youth (Homecoming)
2025
7.6Wang Bing concludes his monumental Youth trilogy in expansive fashion, giving ever wider scope to the lives of migrant workers in Zhili’s textile factories as they plan to go to their remote hometowns to visit their families and celebrate the festivities for New Year’s break.
Youth (Homecoming)
2025
7.1An insight into the everyday lives of 50 inmates of a mental institution in the Chinese province of Yunnan, who are there for killing someone, committing a crime against a public official, or have a developmental disability.
'Til Madness Do Us Part
2014
7.1An insight into the everyday lives of 50 inmates of a mental institution in the Chinese province of Yunnan, who are there for killing someone, committing a crime against a public official, or have a developmental disability.
'Til Madness Do Us Part
2014
7.1An insight into the everyday lives of 50 inmates of a mental institution in the Chinese province of Yunnan, who are there for killing someone, committing a crime against a public official, or have a developmental disability.
'Til Madness Do Us Part
2014
7.4Wang Xilin, 86, is one of China's most important modern classical composers. During the Cultural Revolution he was the target of severe persecution, enduring beatings, imprisonment and torture. With excerpts from his Symphonies, he revisits for this film some of the horrifying events that still live on in his memory as testimony to an era that saw the dehumanization of the entire Chinese nation.
Man in Black
2023
7.6Filmed in the Inner Mongolian portion of the Gobi Desert, this film follows a group of oil field workers as they go about their daily routine.
Crude Oil
2008
7.6Filmed in the Inner Mongolian portion of the Gobi Desert, this film follows a group of oil field workers as they go about their daily routine.
Crude Oil
2008
7.8The film consists almost entirely of an interview with the elderly He Fengming, recounting her experiences in post-1949 China.
Fengming: A Chinese Memoir
2007
5.3Six directors, six independent films, six visions on the state of the world. Each carrying a unique and personal interpretation of a specific experience, their crossover creates new space for a dynamic and radical inquisitive reflection.
The State of the World
2007