Shanghai anchors this look at China's breakneck modernization, its skyline of glass towers standing in for the country's economic ambitions. Cranes dot nearly every block as the film tracks the scale of construction reshaping the city, block by block, from riverside slums to the glittering high-rises of Pudong. Interviews and on-the-ground footage follow migrant laborers, developers, and residents caught between the old neighborhoods being demolished and the new city rising in their place. The film treats Shanghai as a stand-in for China itself, a place where a command economy and global capital have combined to produce growth on a scale the planners themselves seem astonished by. Rather than settle for postcard shots of the skyline, the camera spends time in construction sites and cramped apartments alike, showing what the boom costs the people living through it. The result is a portrait of a city building its future in real time, faster than anyone can fully explain.