Best of 2021: Ascension

From buzzy award contenders to hidden gems you might have missed during lockdown, catch up on this year’s best and brightest docs on our big screen. Members get $5 tickets!

Visually mesmerizing and masterfully crafted, Ascension is a work of hypnotic genius shot in 51 locations across the People’s Republic of China. Documenting the county’s industrial supply chain without text and narration, the film interposes opposing images—wealth and poverty, movement and stasis, worker and consumer—to reveal a staggering tableau of contemporary China, its behemoth market system and the human life that flourishes within it. Dubbed “a symphony of productivity” by The New York Times and garnering universal accolades on the film festival circuit, Ascension investigates our timeless and universal questions about the paradox of economic progress.

In Mandarin with English subtitles