American Factory (2019) on Netflix
NR20191h 50mDocumentary
A Chinese billionaire opens a factory in a shuttered General Motors plant near Dayton, Ohio, and hires two thousand American workers. Fuyao, a Chinese company, occupies Moraine Assembly.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.4/1025,225 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Moraine Assembly, a General Motors plant near Dayton, Ohio, shut down. A Chinese billionaire opens a factory in the building and hires two thousand American workers, and Fuyao, a Chinese company, occupies the plant. Optimism marks the early days, then setbacks arrive as the high-tech Chinese operation and working-class America clash. Fuyao granted filming access at its Ohio and Chinese plant locations, and production ran from February 2015 to the end of 2017, with two Chinese filmmakers helping with the Mandarin-language portions.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about American Factory (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- American Factory was the first film acquired by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground Productions; it is distributed by Netflix.
- Directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert used lavalier microphones to balance worker dialogue against factory noise and recorded workers' voice-overs at their own homes; Bognar said this created the effect of a worker's inner monologue.
- Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert had already filmed the Moraine Assembly plant for their 2009 Oscar-nominated short The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, and returned to the same plant for American Factory.
