Wang Bing’s latest is a monumental work of testimony, largely comprised of interviews with survivors of the Jiabiangou and Mingshui re-education camps of the late 1950s.

The first part of Wang’s nine-hour debut epic follows a small group of workers in the industrial Tiexi district in Shenyang employed in three state-owned factories as they deal with the effects of deindustrialization and the advent of the free market on the Chinese economy.

The richly humanist second part of West of the Tracks sensitively chronicles the everyday lives of the families of the state-owned housing block known as Rainbow Row, particularly their teenage children.

The final part of West of the Tracks finds Wang following a resilient coal-scavenger father and his son, who make a living collecting raw parts from the local railyards and selling them to Tiexi’s dwindling factories.

Rigorous and hypnotic, 15 Hours marks Wang’s most radical meditation on the contemporary meaning of work and the state of labor conditions in present-day China.