--- title: "American Factory" year: 2019 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/american-factory" fi1m_score: 78 critics_score: 74 critics_reviews: 13 published: "2026-09-17T05:40:01.391180+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T05:40:26.515497+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # American Factory (2019) Directed by Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert · 1h 50m · MPA NR · Documentary **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics 74 from 13 reviews *In a sentence:* Chinese staff are warned that Americans have fat fingers and hate heat; the Americans are warned about nothing at all > Bognar and Reichert filmed inside a Chinese-owned Ohio plant and made a fair, patient film about two ways of working under one roof. It has more people than it has time for and a score that keeps consoling them, but it earns your evening. ## Synopsis Moraine, Ohio, December 2008: the General Motors plant builds its last vehicle and closes. Six years later Fuyao, a Chinese glass company, buys the empty building to make car windscreens, hires local workers, many of them former GM staff, and flies in Chinese employees to train them. Vice president Junming ‘Jimmy’ Wang briefs the arrivals on how Americans think; Dave Burrows and John Gauthier, the American executives, try to hit production targets; Senator Sherrod Brown mentions unions at the opening ceremony and the platform goes cold. On the floor, glass inspector Shawnea Rosser and forklift operator Jill Lamantia compare their new wages with their old ones, while furnace engineer Wong He, far from home, gets to know his American supervisor Rob Haerr. ## Review In December 2008 the General Motors plant at Moraine, Ohio, built its last vehicle, and Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert filmed it; their short *The Last Truck* (2009) is about that day. Six years on a Chinese company called Fuyao bought the empty building to make car glass, and the filmmakers came back and stayed. *American Factory* is a good, patient, fair account of what happens when two ways of working are put under one roof. It has more stories than 110 minutes can hold, and Chad Cannon’s score is softer than it should be, but it is worth an evening. The access is the first thing you notice. Fuyao let Bognar and Reichert into everything: the ribbon-cutting, where Senator Sherrod Brown mentions Ohio’s union history and the executives on the platform stop smiling; the meetings where Junming ‘Jimmy’ Wang, the vice president, tells newly arrived Chinese staff that Americans like to be praised and must be handled; a training session in which the locals are described as slow, with fat fingers. Dave Burrows and John Gauthier, the Americans hired to run the place, look more and more like men passing on instructions they do not agree with. The Ohio workers are the heart of it. Shawnea Rosser inspects glass and compares what she earned at General Motors with what she earns now. Jill Lamantia drives a forklift and describes, without self-pity, how far her circumstances have fallen since. Cynthia Harper is asked to keep pace with machines that do not wait. These are fine, unforced portraits; we wanted more of them. The film keeps cutting away just as someone is about to say something new. Bognar and Reichert do the same for the Chinese staff, which is where the film is unusual. Wong He, a furnace engineer, is a long way from his family and talks about it flatly, which is worse than tears. His American supervisor, Rob Haerr, invites the Chinese furnace crew to Thanksgiving and then to fire guns in his garden, and both men are puzzled to find they like each other. Later American managers are flown to the parent plant in China for the New Year party, where workers in matching costumes sing about the company. One of the visitors weeps in the front row. So, to our surprise, did we: the singing is sincere, the people are exhausted, and the film holds on their faces and lets you decide whether you are watching a party or a parade. Lindsay Utz cuts it without a narrator and almost without captions. She sets the American morning meeting, where people shuffle in with coffee, against the Chinese one, where workers stand in rows and shout a slogan back at a supervisor, and leaves it there. The camerawork, shared between Bognar, Julia Reichert, Jeff Reichert, Erick Stoll and Aubrey Keith, is handheld and close, and the glass gets the best shots: orange sheets sliding out of the furnace. Cannon’s score is the one soft choice. It plays under people describing what they have lost and tells us, gently, that things will be all right, when the film has just shown us they will not. The second half belongs to a campaign to unionise, which we will not describe past its start, and to Jimmy Wang, the most watchable person in the film: funny, frank, prone to saying on camera what most managers save for the car park, and then, by degrees, not funny at all. Rebecca Ruan-O’Shaughnessy, the company’s lawyer, appears with a smile that does not move. Some reviews have called the film’s treatment of the Chinese workers undifferentiated, even xenophobic. We think that is wrong; Wong He alone disproves it. But the film has room for one fully drawn Chinese worker and half a dozen Americans, and the imbalance shows. Set against the observational documentaries it descends from, this is unusually even-handed and unusually easy to watch. It never bores. It never quite bites. See it with someone who has been told, at work, to be grateful, and see how long they stay quiet afterwards. *Fi1m score 78, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like American Factory, and for the same reasons. The praise clusters around the access Bognar and Reichert secured to a Chinese-owned plant on the site of a shuttered GM factory in Ohio, and around their refusal to take sides: the film is repeatedly described as even-handed, humane and free of villains. Several reviews single out the editing for holding a large cast of American and Chinese workers and managers in view, and the union campaign of the second half is widely thought its most dramatic stretch. The reservations are narrower and come from a minority. Slant Magazine and The Hollywood Reporter both detect a xenophobic undertone in how the Chinese workers are handled; Slant also feels the film skims threads it ought to follow, while the Reporter finds the American characters underdrawn. The Playlist calls it layered but without a firm point of view. The spread is not wide: no negative reviews, two mixed, and even those credit the union sequences. ### Reviews we read (13) - **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (A-): The critic praises the film's matter-of-fact, non-agitprop approach to labor and cultural clashes, reminiscent of Barbara Kopple documentaries, and its even-handed treatment of all parties involved. It singles out the fly-on-the-wall access and detailed depiction of differing work ethics and cultural divides for commendation. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/there-s-no-michael-moore-style-agitprop-in-the-superb-c-1837370790) - **Vulture** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a great, expansive, deeply humanist work that is angry yet empathetic, effectively gesturing toward the decline of traditional manufacturing work. It singles out the intimate access to both American and Chinese perspectives and the vivid portrayal of cultural misunderstandings for praise. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/american-factory-review-obamas-netflix-doc-is-eye-opening.html) - **Film Comment**, Eric Hynes (85/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's balanced and expansive portrayal of the factory ecosystem, honoring multiple viewpoints without simplistic advocacy. It singles out the access granted by management and the editing for capturing the complexities of global labor and worker struggles. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/make-it-real-double-shifts/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (80/100, inferred): Turan commends the film for its multifaceted look at U.S.-Chinese collaboration, emphasizing the empathetic depiction of cultural differences and the complexities of global economics rather than a simplistic narrative. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2019-08-20/american-factory-review-documentary-china-barack-michelle-obama-netflix) - **Screen Daily** (80/100, inferred): The review praises the film's remarkably candid, fly-on-the-wall account of the culture clash and labor struggles at a Chinese-owned factory in Ohio. It highlights the skillful construction and topical access to personal stories and broader economic conflicts. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/american-factory-sundance-review/5136212.article) - **Variety**, Peter Debruge (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's exploration of cultural clashes in a Chinese-owned factory reopening a GM plant, highlighting the nuanced portrayal of workers' struggles with wages, unions, and differing work ethics. [Read](https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/american-factory-review-2-1203198182/) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as an absorbing study of the culture clash in a Chinese-run Ohio car plant, but ultimately a sobering documentary in a minor key that highlights issues of capital versus labour. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/15/american-factory-review-a-sobering-documentary-by-the-obamas) - **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (70/100, inferred): Brody highlights the film's access to the factory and its probing analysis of labor issues amplified by political conflicts between American workers and Chinese management. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/american-factory) - **Slant Magazine**, Carson Lund (50/100, inferred): The critic notes the film's committed stance as a rallying cry for worker solidarity but complains that it skims the surface of fascinating threads and treats Chinese workers in a somewhat undifferentiated, xenophobic manner. It singles out the final hour's effective populist filmmaking and union vote coverage for praise. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/maryland-film-festival-2019-the-hottest-august-donbass-american-factory/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Daniel Fienberg (50/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as earnest and well-intentioned in its portrayal of a Chinese company reopening an Ohio factory but notes it fails to fully resolve complex ideas about the American Dream. Praise goes to the dramatic and amusing union campaign sections, while complaints focus on underdeveloped American characters and lingering xenophobic undertones. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/american-factory-review-1179477/) - **Eye for Film**, Amber Wilkinson (75/100, inferred): Bognar and Reichert's observational approach maintains balance without seeking villains, highlighting how productivity pressures and weak labor laws erode worker welfare while individuals remain small cogs in a larger machine. The film stands out for its eye for gesture, smooth editing, and evocative score that captures both automation's rhythm and workers' emotional landscape. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/american-factory-2019-film-review-by-amber-wilkinson) - **The Wrap**, Steve Pond (75/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a bleak examination of cultural clashes and capitalist pressures when a Chinese company takes over a shuttered Ohio factory, likening it to a Frank Capra story that ends before resolution. It singles out the illuminating portrayal of globalization's human costs and the filmmakers' balanced view of both cultures amid union tensions and efficiency demands. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/american-factory-film-review-netflix-obama/) - **The Playlist**, Andrew Bundy (B-): The documentary is respectably layered in its cross-cultural observations but ultimately lacks a firm thematic viewpoint or clear perspective, making it thematically unfocused despite interesting material. It succeeds best in specific interpersonal sequences, such as the US workers' trip to the Chinese plant. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/american-factory-review-20190821/) ## Details - **Director:** Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert - **Director:** Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert - **Cinematography:** Steven Bognar, Aubrey Keith, Jeff Reichert, Julia Reichert, Erick Stoll - **Editor:** Lindsay Utz - **Music:** Chad Cannon - **Producer:** Julie Parker Benello, Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert - **Cast:** Junming 'Jimmy' Wang as Self - Vice President, Fuyao; Sherrod Brown as Self - U.S. Senator, Ohio; Dave Burrows as Self - Vice President, Fuyao Glass America; John Gauthier as Self - President, Fuyao Glass America; Rob Haerr as Self - Furnace Supervisor; Cynthia Harper as Self - Lamination Specialist; Wong He as Self - Furance Engineer; Jill Lamantia as Self - Forklift Operator - **Runtime:** 1h 50m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 21 August 2019 - **Genres:** Documentary - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36QeKOJ2Fc ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2020: Best Documentary Feature Film (won) - Sundance U.S. Directing Award: Documentary 2019: Sundance U.S. Directing Award: Documentary (won) ## If you liked this - *Harlan County, USA* (1976), Fi1m 88: Kopple’s Kentucky miners’ strike; the film this one learned its patience from — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/harlan-county-u-s-a.md) - *Roger & Me* (1989), Fi1m 78: Michael Moore chases General Motors round Flint; angrier, funnier, far less fair — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/roger-and-me.md) - *Last Train Home* (2009): Chinese factory workers ride home for New Year; the other side of the furnace - *Ascension* (2021): Chinese work and consumption filmed as a wordless ladder, floor by floor - *Made in Dagenham* (2010): Ford’s Essex machinists strike for equal pay; the cheerful fictional cousin --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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