One Child Nation (2019)

Directed by

Jialing Zhang, Nanfu Wang

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 29m

Rated

16

Rating

7.2 of 10 from 173 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary examines the impact of China's one-child policy through interviews with officials, victims, and others. The filmmaker also explores her own family's connection to the policy while searching for a lost relative.

soberingintimateinvestigativepersonaldisturbingreflectiverestrainedinformative

What happens

One Child Nation is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang about the fallout of China's one-child policy that lasted from 1979 to 2015. The documentary is made up of various interviews with former village chiefs, state officials, ex-human traffickers, artists, midwives, journalists, researchers, and victims of the one-child policy. Nanfu Wang stated, in a roundtable discussion, that when creating the film she wanted to do a "360 degree with the policy—people who carried out the policy and people who were the victims of the policy". During the film, Nanfu Wang discovers more about the ties her own family have with the one-child policy, as they unsuccessfully attempt to locate her cousin who was abandoned by her father's sister in 1989. By the end of the film, Nanfu Wang admits that despite the horrors of the one-child policy, there is an overwhelming acceptance of the policy that remains in China, and a shared attitude that there was no other choice. The closing scenes of the film show the growing propaganda for two child families, presenting the repetition of state interference with family planning within China. One Child Nation premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2019, where it was awarded the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary Award, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 9, 2019, by Amazon Studios. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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