In the middle of June 2021, I arrived in the city like all the northern migrants with dreams of being a human being. I stayed in a dirty, pungent-smelling youth hostel on Youth Road. I looked at the skinny young man on the opposite bed, who had been lying there for almost a month. He had been lying there for almost a month, his hair and face dishevelled, and he could only live on his fantasies. Two days later I couldn’t stand the environment there and left to go to this hostel where I was filming. For me, the hostel was a temporary place to stay, stuffed with the “migrant workers” of society. I didn’t feel connected to these young people because I would be leaving soon. I can get a job and rent an apartment on the basis of my value-added competitive advantage. Soon I got a job as a documentary writer and director, doing films with grand narrative backdrops, being milked for surplus value by my bosses while gloating over my false sense of engagement with the world. I lived like this until the day I was owed wages and couldn’t afford the rent. Suddenly I thought of those people in the hostel, those young people like me, and on 1 December, after quitting my job, I went back to the Compass Hostel with the intention of documenting them.