State of Affairs

The students of the third grade of High School #2 in Chongqing, the best school in central China, are being honed to fill important positions in the new global economy. The students are children of the new Chinese middle class. Often their parents have lived through hunger and their children must now succeed where they did not. This documentary follows five hyper-intelligent Chinese students through their final high-pressure year at an elite high school in Chongqing, a megalopolis in central China. Competing for limited positions at Beijing’s top universities, alongside 10,5 million other students across the country, they prepare for the end-of-year exams that will determine whether they can join the new class of managers and civil servants, who are to propel China to become the largest economy in the world.