The final part of Wang Bing’s laconic and monumental Youth trilogy on young textile workers in Zhili, China, also works excellently as a standalone documentary on social and economic inequalities in contemporary (pre-Covid) China. With just a few protagonists, Youth (Homecoming) follows them over the years between daily life in sweatshops and rented rooms and the yearly interruption for the Chinese New Year: workshops empty out, card games increase, and many embark on the days-long journey to their home villages. Weddings are celebrated, family obligations fulfilled, and not everyone returns to the same job afterward. The small film crew traverses these realities with a handheld camera (and discreet sighs while climbing stairs), while in some touching scenes the filmmaker becomes a counterpart for the workers in their twenties to reflect on themselves. (Joachim Schätz)