An official in the mill director's office, Wang Qing, insisted in an interview that conditions in the factory were improving and said protests were the work of "a handful of troublemakers".
As band saws droned on a recent Friday, the mill director, Ng Kay Yip, ushered a potential customer from the Netherlands around the facility, explaining how the trees had been harvested and showing him the nearby factory, where the timber was planed into semifinished pieces for windows and doors.
After graduating from the Leningrad Engineering & Economics Institute in 1988, Mordashov mastered accounting and attracted the notice of the mill director, who became his mentor and hired him as a senior economist.
After finishing his studies, Kosygin was employed as a textile mill director.
Despite their Cannes accolades, they are far from run-of-the-mill directors, preferring to build narratives of loss through film fragments.
A Cone Mills director, Marc Kozberg, leads the opposition to the plan to sell the company to Mr. Ross's company, W. L. Ross, through a bankruptcy reorganization.
Teresa Mills, director of the Buckeye Environmental Network, which helps communities wage environmental challenges and supported the buyout, said that in the end, the buyout was easier than trying to force the plant to clean up.
It wasn't just the all-cash nature of BAM's offer or the desire to keep Mills in public hands, though, that likely persuaded Mills' directors.
"I see opportunity where a lot of other people see risks," said Adam Brett, Fullwell Mill's director.
And this year, according to Lisa Cooney, Paper Mill's director of education, Rising Star may become even more influential.
That, and much more, remains for Paper Mill's director, James Brennan to explain, but, one hopes, not for the playwright to find out.
