I can see my place in all that. A 17-year-old Chinese country girl who works in a factory because her brother went to university. Totally insignificant, a worker bee trapped in the hive. Locked up for life.

China today. Mei, a 17-year-old assembly-line worker, lives, sleeps and works in a garment factory. Mei comes from the countryside, from a farming family that sent their son to university. Her dormitory and her exhausting daily routine are shared with 11 other young seamstresses, all subjected to the same rhythm and stuck with the same bleak prospects. At night, she reads out loud to her roommates from the only book she owns, a gift from her grandmother. But above all, at night, Mei can dream…
One day, the factory foreman leaves and a new tyrant takes his place. Denied Christmas leave for disobedience, for a few days, Mei gets a taste of freedom in the deserted factory.
Confronting a touch of romanticism with Mei’s bitter reality, La Fabrique du monde is an intimate immersion in a mind awakening to love and life that allows itself to perceive its own individuality – whatever the price may be.

Mei, an exploited 17-year-old garment-industry worker rebels, opening herself to life and attempting to assemble her own world.