Art Box portal //
Do you like Christmas movies? Surely, some are your favorites. But have you ever thought about the everyday lives of workers who produce Christmas decorations for the entire world? That’s exactly what the documentary film MERRY CHRISTMAS, YIWU (2020) by Mladen Kovačević is about.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, YIWU is an intimate film about the everyday lives of Chinese workers stuck in between Chinese communist tradition and the newly discovered Chinese dream takes place in Yiwu, a city with 600 Christmas factories, that produce Christmas for the entire world.
Even though China does not celebrate Christmas, there are over 600 Christmas decoration factories in Yiwu. They are often run as a family business, employing people from across the country. This documentary focuses on several of them, located in and around Yiwu.
Communist ideals have long lost their value in Yiwu, a city with 600 Christmas factories, in which Christmas as we know it is produced for the entire world. With rising wages, the workers in Christmas factories can now afford the newest iPhones, but they still live in crowded dormitories. All migrants in their own country, nostalgic for someplace far away, some miss their families left in their hometowns, and others miss their friends and lovers from the factories when they go home for holidays. The young generation is already tired of long factory hours, chemical fumes, and glitter particles, and they do not care about their parents’ wishes to get educated. Stuck in between Chinese tradition and the newly discovered Chinese dream, they want their own businesses, to be rich, to be independent, and to be in love.
Mladen Kovacevic was born on February 6, 1979 in Serbia. Mladen is a producer and director, known for Merry Christmas, Yiwu (2020), 4 Years in 10 Minutes (2018) and Wall of Death, and All That (2016). His movie Merry Christmas, Yiwu, which premiered at Rotterdam, won the Heart of Sarajevo at the documentary competition.
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