West of the Tracks is tough stuff, particularly in its bleak depiction of China’s northeastern Tie Xi district and the city of Shenyang—once a powerhouse of the Asian manufacturing miracle, but now a virtual ghost town. You’ll be reminded of Michael Moore’s Flint. Massive in scope but amazingly never redundant, Wang’s study is divided into three sections: Rust is a four-hour wallop of worker depression, set amid shuttering smelting plants; Remnants punctures holes in a phonily optimistic community called Rainbow Row; Rails paints a nightmarish future of scavenging for scraps.

Of course, this ought to have resonance for anyone who’s ever driven through Pittsburgh, Gary or Butte; if the upcoming century does indeed belong to the booming Eastern nation, here are the seeds of its discontent sown right before our eyes. Says one painfully vulnerable worker, nude and heading for the shower, “We don’t even have the tools to fix things.” Another young filmmaker making international waves, Jia Zhang-ke, has recently dramatized these economic disparities in his comedies The World and Unknown Pleasures. Here are the realities unvarnished. Bring a cushion if you must. (Opens Wed 18; Anthology.) — Joshua Rothkopf