2019 | USA, China | R | 85 min.
China’s egregious population control measure that made it illegal for couples to have more than one child may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its merciless enforcement is only beginning. In her Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary One Child Nation, Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, TCFF 2016) brilliantly takes a deeply personal approach of familial reckoning to the sweeping subject matter, returning home to investigate the generational effects of this destructive social experiment. Exposing one human rights violation after another, from abandoned newborns and forced sterilizations, to state-sponsored kidnappings, One Child Nation is a striking indictment of a government that sought to control women's bodies and reveals how persistent propaganda conditioned and coerced Chinese citizens into perpetrating shocking crimes against each other. It's brave, it's powerful, it's shocking, it's important, and it will stay with you long after the credits roll. In Person: Director Nanfu Wang.