Shot in 51 locations across China, “Ascension” explores the country’s industrial supply chain. Director Jessica Kingdon described the doc to us as “an image-driven essay film composed of a series of vignettes, climbing up the rungs of China’s social ladder. The film is structured in three parts, ascending through class levels,” she explained. “It begins with labor in factories; the middle-class training for and selling to aspirational consumers; and the elites reveling in a new level of hedonistic enjoyment.”

A new trailer for the Tribeca Film Festival title sees workers on an assembly line pressured to “work faster” and reminded that there’s “no chit-chat” allowed. “Or I’ll sell you off,” their manager threatens.

“A unifying theme of the film is its embrace of the absurd, which I feel to be a powerful lens through which paradox and open-ended bemusement can be portrayed,” Kingdon told us. “The film is a Rorschach test of sorts, in which images do not carry explicit meaning, but rather let the viewer decide for themselves and invite free associations. I recently heard a friend describe it as ‘an acid trip version of The Economist magazine’s Focus on China issue,’ and I think that also suits.”

Asked what drew her to this story, the “Commodity City” director said, “I would say I feel a general pull towards China both because of my heritage, as well as an aesthetic interest in the philosophical questions contemporary China elicits. I see China as a stage for universal questions surrounding the paradox of progress, which are magnified and played out as it transitions from what was once known as the world’s factory to one of the largest consumer societies in the world.”

“Ascension” opens in theaters October 8.