China Blue offers an accessible, cleverly constructed and ultimately heart-wrenching view into the lives of sweatshop workers in Sichuan province, China. The documentary follows the lives of three teenage workers in a blue jeans factory – Jasmine, Lipeng, and Orchid – who like most of the cheap labour pool in China are female and originate from poor, rural areas. Multi-layered, the film does not rely on mere reality sketches of the harshness of the workers’ lives but explores the personalities, aspirations and imaginations of the main characters with sensitivity and tact. Most provocatively, China Blue hints at who is responsible for the slave-like conditions these girls are bound to. It is not, as one might assume, only the factory owners and the negligent Chinese authorities who are to blame. Rather, director Micha X. Peled calls into question the whole system of global free trade and points at the responsibility retailers and ourselves – the consumers – all share. In the words of Jasmine: “Who are the fat, tall people who buy these jeans we make?”—Melody Nixon