Director Zhao Liang presents an astounding picture of how the mining, steel, and housing industries have shaped the landscape in Inner Mongolia and changed the lives of people who live and work there. Called “a feat of pictorial storytelling,” the only lines in the film are powerful monologues...

“Bookended by dazzling imagery of vast Chinese shipyards and factories, the three-hour-long We the Workers is a detailed, intimate and at times terrifying record of labor activists’ risky campaigns against unscrupulous employers, their menacing minders, and indifferent—or downright...