Shot over a six-year period (2009-2015) in the industrial heartland of south China, a major hub in the global supply chain, We the Workers follows labor activists as they find common ground with workers, helping them negotiate with local officials and factory owners over wages and working conditions. Threats, attacks, detention and boredom become part of their daily lives as they struggle to strengthen worker solidarity in the face of threats and pressures from the police and their employers. In the process, we see in their words and actions the emergence of a nascent working class consciousness and labor movement in China.

“On the front lines of China’s record-level labor unrest, Wen’s film offers rare insight into how such collective action is planned and organized, and how hard NGO employees try to stay within the moving goalposts of what activism is permissible in China.” — CNN

“Reveals and supports the birth of collective action stripped of an ideology that long stifled it.” — Cinéma du Réel