When it comes to making films about his country, renowned mainland director Jia Zhangke has his heart in the right place. Through his often critical films, the 39-year-old auteur has been seeking to capture the sad consequences of China’s rapid urbanization and the impact it has had on the individual level. Take his 2006 effort, the Golden Lion award-winning feature “Still Life,” which documented the destruction of an old village and the subsequent displacement of its inhabitants to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project. “24 City” is in a similar vein: a secret, 50-year-old government-run weapons factory in Chengdu, code-named “Factory 420,” is demolished to make way for a new housing project—the eponymous “24 City.” Over its lifespan, the factory has seen over 30,000 workers pour through its doors, leaving their loved ones behind in their home country—and now the last batch of workers find themselves stranded and alone when the factory is torn down.

The film focuses on the plight of the individual factory workers by following the lives of a dozen people affected by the closure, interviewing them documentary-style. Some are retired, some are still working there, and some are the adult children of the factory employees. Predictably, the interviews serve to highlight the distinct differences between China’s older generation and their children, in terms of their values and attitudes towards industrialization. The workers lament the loss of the factory and question what will become of them now that their livelihood has been taken away, while the youth extol the virtues of modernization, real estate and making money.

All this should have made “24 City” a great film, but for one fatal misstep. Although it was shot in a documentary style, there are large swathes of fiction. Four of the twelve interviewees are in fact actors, which leaves the audience floundering, wondering what to make of it, caught halfway between drama and documentary. Jia provided an explanation for his decision to cast actors shortly after the film’s first screening in Hong Kong, saying that he had to add fictional elements to complete the story. But while Jia’s emotive portrayal of the bleak lives of the factory workers tries to tug at our heartstrings, we can’t help but be suspicious of just how authentic a portrayal it really is. And ultimately, one ends up caring a lot less.

3/5 Stars by Winnie Yeung.

Directed by Jia Zhangke. Starring Joan Chen, Zhao Tao, Lu Liping. Category TBC, 107 minutes. Continuing.