After successfully running a toy factory in Shenzhen for 20 years, Lin Dalin has to face the economic squeeze and competition from cheaper Southeast Asian countries. New orders are scarce, pay is slow, savings are gone on safety rules, and workers threaten to revolt. In order to avoid bankruptcy, Lin reluctantly accepts a large but very low profit margin order from a big international client. Meanwhile Ai Jing, a young journalist, is sent as an undercover to investigate the working conditions of the factory, one of the many‘blood and sweat’ factories. When the government announces a minimum wage increase, the risk of a strike looms. Under intense pressure from all sides, Lin Dalin struggles to hold his business together and fulfill the big order... The confrontation that results will bring the entire industry to the brink of collapse.

With FACTORY BOSS, Zhang Wei, enriched by his experience as an entrepreneur, delves into the reality of ‘Made in China’, alternating between the point of view of the exploited factory workers, a young journalist who has infiltrated and a boss struggling with his American clients. Zhang Wei gives us a realistic vision of the ‘Factory of the world’ without concession to the economic and social transformation in China. Illuminating the hidden side of our globalized economy, Zhang helps us understand the stakes of the mutations taking place at that moment in China. Through the example of Lin Dalin’s factory, he questions the future of a society dominated by brutal capitalism while drawing up a simple and sincere portrait of a pugnacious and determined Chinese boss.

Why I wanted to direct FACTORY BOSS?
This film was initially called Made in China, but due to the pressures of censorship, the name was changed to FACTORY BOSS, from an English novel entitled Factory Girl concerned with a similar theme. It took me six years to prepare for this film. This project was formed in my mind when I was studying directing at the Beijing Film Academy. Having lived in Shenzhen for over 20 years, I was compelled to speak up about these important issues which are directly linked to the accelerated development of the Chinese economy. The inspiration behind FACTORY BOSS is the exposition of the harsh survival conditions of SMEs (small manufacturing enterprises) in the delta region of the Pearl River around Shenzhen, following the reform and the opening of the country to international business over 30 years ago.
The film reveals both the internal struggle and the contradictions of a boss managing one of these factories. The industrial transformation was once the economical pillar of Shenzhen and although its collapse is not a very commercial subject. I believe this film will raise a lot of interest. The “Made in China” label was once the pride of the Pearl River delta, and indeed in the whole nation. At one time, this region alone represented nearly 70% of the global toy export business. Today 90% of these toy factories have closed. Shenzhen once had more than 4,000 toy factories, and now only 400 remain. Where have the workers gone? What has become of the community? This is the real reason behind my film. I see this as a worthy subject to be explored so that we can avoid such a travesty in the future. Many westerners have been familiar with “Made in China” products since childhood, and they have likely wondered why so many products come from China. Ever since China joined the World Trade Organization, information about “workhouse misery” and worker suicides have been widely exposed internationally and the West has started to pay more attention to the conditions behind “Made in China”. A lot of negative and misleading information has been reported. Hence I felt it prudent to make a film that finally shows the true other side and recount a real story to the public.
FACTORY BOSS was filmed in Shenzhen and Dongguan over the course of 45 days. Post-production took me another eight months, because I always wanted to make it better. It was important for me to demonstrate the small businesses in the Pearl River delta, to recount the crisis in this factory, the glory of the past and the perplexity of the present. I hope that this film will let the public reflect on the plight of the people caught between the businesses and the politics in China. The film industry rarely explores this subject, therefore I hope this feature will serve the power of a documentary where you can see the rise and the fall of an industry within a period of history marked by a pioneering generation.
 
The style of FACTORY BOSS
The style of the film is quite realistic, sometimes tending towards documentary. Having studied many realistic films from Italy and Poland, I found these films to be detail oriented, where every action is so convincing so as to make you feel the life in these countries. This is also apparent in the Iranian film A Separation. Each scene details the reality of the stringent Iranian society. It is this state of mind that I intend to create in FACTORY BOSS. Even though the story is set in the present, I hope that it will equally reflect the issues in the future. The film’s protagonist, Lin Dalin, played by Yao Anlian, is a reflection of the actor’s actual early years and shows us a characteristic of the first entrepreneurs in Shenzhen: most of them started as factory workers before ascending to the ownership of a business. As a consequence, there are some elements in the film which show the life during the early years of Lin Dalin, but the film mainly concentrates on the current survival conditions of the bosses in Shenzhen. Despite of many challenges, I felt it was very important to film in the actual factories. Some of the scenes shot in Dongguan was difficult due to alterations of the factories. Some of the décor was missing and we were forced to re-create setting in a production studio.
To further convince the public about the realities of life in these factory towns, I asked the actors to appear as natural as possible, and opted for natural make-up or none at all in some cases. Each touch contributed to the realistic look of the scenes. For example, the simplicity of the layout of Lin Dalin’s office is not only its principle characteristic, but also very representative of offices used by the bosses in this period. Seeing him work within it constructs the boundaries of his realm within the greater world that is the toy factory. Since the economic liberalization reforms of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, Shenzhen has become the Special Economic Zone of China. This marked the first time foreign investors were permitted and led to the implementation of multinational companies. It also created an environment for numerous Chinese nationals to migrate towards this town in an effort to find a job. The first Chinese migrated factory workers were to eventually become the bosses of the current era in the film. Their precipitous rise sparked in them a feeling of unconditional loyalty toward the Chinese Communist Party. This loyalty is represented in the red flags featured in the offices of each boss represented in the story. In contrast, other aspects of their lives, their customs, their temperaments, their way of living did not change nearly as fast.
In order to remain true to the integrity of the story, I was forced to curtail certain aspects which proved to be too dramatic, such as the romance between Lin and the journalist. I found this relationship distracting for a boss in a desperate situation. His stress level could not successfully navigate love as well. The bosses in the factories often have a lonely life, with the wife and the children abroad while he remains in China to develop his business. Lin Dalin is a typical example of the first entrepreneurs in Shenzhen, members of a lonely generation. About the actors I wanted to have real actors, but not celebrities, which might distract from the intensity of the roles. Yao Anlian, an actor in more than 60 films plays Lin Dalin. To hundreds of workers, he appears a cold-hearted boss, but on the other side, he seems tobe a victim who carries the Chinese dream, desiring to stop being foreign companies’ labor subcontractor and create his own toy brand. With respect to Tan Yan, we found an excellent actress who responds perfectly to our expectations in the role of the journalist Ai Jing. Ambitious and direct, she wants to reveal the working conditions in the factory and help the workers, but slowly she realizes that her efforts in denouncing these conditions will also result in massive unemployment and destitution. She discovers that there are problems beyond what she intended to expose, and it is necessary to change “Made in China” in order to solve them.