Following the birth of her son, director Nanfu Wang’s foray into motherhood prompts her to consider her own upbringing in the shadow of China’s one-child policy. Starting from the experiences of her family and townspeople and extending to the policy’s international consequences, Wang documents the enormous cost of a social experiment that, when enacted in 1979, claimed to be absolutely essential for the economic salvation of the nation. Candid interviews with relatives, medical and governmental personnel, journalists, and activists are woven together with Wang’s personal musings on Chinese culture, civil liberties, and national memory. The film raises important bioethical questions, demonstrates a troubling intersection of medicine and the state, and confronts viewers with the realities of a policy that intruded into one of the most intimate aspects of a people’s humanity.
