American Factory

The story told in AMERICAN FACTORY begins in 2008, when General Motors closed its factory in Dayton, Ohio and 10,000 jobs were lost. The film begins in 2015, when China's Fuyau Auto Glass, which makes glass for autos and trucks, opened a U.S. plant in that same abandoned factory and hired more than a thousand American workers, many of whom had never recovered from the loss of their GM jobs. It was to be an extraordinary venture -- of immense value to the workers, the community, and to the Chinese corporation who saw the move as a fruitful enterprise. But, predictably, growing pains set in almost immediately. Though hundreds of Chinese workers were brought in to help with the transition, cultural clashes were hard to overcome. The prospect of the union was daunting to Fuyau's Chairman Cao, and that escalating conflict is part of the story as well.