Film
Complicit
Other titles called Complicit: the 2013 film, the 2024 film.
Complicit is a lean 89-minute documentary following Yi Yeting, a Chinese electronics factory worker turned activist, as he wages a one-man campaign against industry abuse from his hospital bed. It's intimate, quietly furious, and relentlessly focused: one man's refusal to stay silent about what the global supply chain demands of its most disposable workers. Essential viewing for anyone who has ever held a smartphone.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a documentary that stays close to one person's stubborn fight and lets the factory floor and the hearings speak for themselves rather than having narration carry them.
Skip it if you want a tidy arc or a light touch; this one is sober and grim, and its pace is deliberate enough to test patience.
What it asks of you: Expect a lean 89 minutes that stays with one man's health and campaign over time, with steady attention needed for the corporate chains and legal detail.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
The True Cost2015
A panoramic investigation into fashion's human and environmental toll, tracing clothes from luxury brands back to sweatshops in Bangladesh and beyond. Beautifully shot, comprehensively reported, and genuinely angry.
But It's an advocacy film, and sometimes the case-making feels heavier than the storytelling. The scale can feel abstract compared to following one person.
Manufactured Landscapes2006
Jennifer Baichwal's hypnotic documentary follows photographer Edward Burtynsky through Chinese factories and industrial zones, capturing the sublime grotesquerie of manufacturing at scale. Visually extraordinary and philosophically unsettling.
But It's meditative rather than agitational; some find the aesthetic distance from human suffering troubling rather than clarifying.
Killing Zoe1993
A first-hand account of resistance in Myanmar, shot on video by activists documenting their own fight against an authoritarian regime. Rough, necessary, and uncommonly brave for a film.
But The technical quality reflects its underground origins; it's hard to watch sometimes, both visually and emotionally.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Complicit
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Act of Killing2012
Both films give voice to those pushed to the margins by systems bigger than themselves, but where Complicit documents resistance, this documents complicity itself. Both ask what we owe to bearing witness to the unbearable.
An Indonesian director asks perpetrators of 1960s genocide to recreate their crimes as movies. Unprecedented access to perpetrators confronting themselves; formally audacious and morally crucial in ways most documentaries never attempt.
But It's long, sometimes incoherent, and the method itself—using spectacle to understand atrocity—is deeply controversial and genuinely hard to process.
More like this (4)
The Corporation2003
A searing examination of corporate power and the legal structures that enable it, mixing talking heads with archival footage and dark wit. Comprehensive and furiously intelligent.
But At 145 minutes it's exhausting by design; the relentless cataloguing of abuses can feel numbing rather than mobilizing.
Sunspring2016
A documentary following migrant workers in Gulf states, examining the human cost of rapid development and modern slavery. Patient, empathetic, and structurally inventive.
But It's slow-burn cinema; there are long sequences with minimal dialogue, which demands active attention.
Blackfish2013
An investigation into SeaWorld's practices that uses corporate documents, whistleblower testimony, and archival footage to build an irrefutable case. Methodical and quietly devastating.
But It's become culturally omnipresent and its conclusions fairly obvious now; the novelty of the revelation has worn thin.
A Better Life2011
Both are about invisible workers and invisible labor, but this approaches it through intimate emotion rather than exposition. It's what Complicit makes you feel turned into a complete dramatic experience.
A fictional narrative film—not a documentary—about an undocumented Mexican day laborer's desperate day in Los Angeles. It achieves what reportage cannot: the subjective weight of precarity, exhaustion, and love under an unjust system.
But It's fiction, which some will experience as less 'real' than testimony; the slow pacing and modest scale offer no catharsis.
People
Directing
- Heather WhiteDirector
- Zhang JialingDirector
Writing
- Christopher SewardWriter
Production
- Diana HoltzbergExecutive Producer
- Heather WhiteProducer
- Liu XinProducer
Recommended by
Bus 174, Richard Jewell, Biggie & Tupac, Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer