“Life is short. When you look back, it’s late…” A man muses quietly to himself as he paces around his factory, piles of shrink-wrapped products – wiping-up cloths – around him. We are 40 minutes into Ascension, a feature-length observational piece from Chinese-American director Jessica Kingdon. Winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at the Tribeca Film Festival and shortlisted for an Oscar, the film follows China’s industrial supply-chain upwards from the factory floor to the country’s elite. 

Encounters include textile workers integrating their own ceaseless micro-movements with those of the machines among which they work. Recruits to an air-conditioning company are made to dress in fatigues, undergo military-style training, make a pledge of corporate allegiance and perform a march-past in honour of senior management. An assembly-line worker uses metal batons to piece together what turns out to be the frame for a sex doll. Her jiggling rubber body is scrubbed down and touched up with cosmetic paint – “Number Three pink” for the nipples – before an alarmingly life-like head whirls rapidly around as it is screwed into place. 

Ascension is a riot of richly-coloured products and packaging accentuated by bright, sterile-white factory décor, backed by a spacious soundtrack whose clever instrumentation seems to emerge from the ambient noise of the production process. The result is beautifully immersive, yet provocative of a deep unease. With no interviews or commentary, I’ve been left alone with my thoughts, wondering who these people are and what they imagine their lives are about.     

The mumbled meditations of the man in the cloth factory thus come as a relief, promising insight and interpretation at last. “When you’re old,” he says to himself, “you realise that nothing is valuable.” I find myself nodding, his words capturing my mood. “You’re rich, you’re poor – at the end, you’re old.” Yes. Yes… 

Then I catch sight of the mobile phone in his hand. He’s reading from a screen – rehearsing. Suddenly, he’s back with his co-workers, taking turns to shout rhythmical, rapid-fire slogans into a camera-phone from across stacks of wiping-up cloths. “Life is short, turn and look!” “Don’t be angry, the enemy is ourselves!” “Cherish parents, wife and kids!” They’re preparing a social media post. This is about selling stock, not taking stock.