One Child Nation

One Child Nation
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Produced by
  • Nanfu Wang
  • Jialing Zhang
  • Christoph Jorg
  • Julie Goldman
  • Christopher Clements
  • Carolyn Hepburn
Cinematography
  • Nanfu Wang
  • Yuanchen Liu
Edited byNanfu Wang
Music by
  • Nathan Halpern
  • Chris Ruggiero
Production
companies
  • Next Generation
  • ITVS
  • WDR/Arte
  • Motto Pictures
  • Pumpernickel Films
Distributed byAmazon Studios
Release dates
  • January 26, 2019 (2019-01-26) (Sundance)
  • August 9, 2019 (2019-08-09) (United States)
Running time
89 minutes
CountryUnited States
Languages
Box office$271,841[1]

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".[2] 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.[3]

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.

  1. ^ "One Child Nation". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on July 23, 2019. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
  2. ^ Greenhalgh, Susan (June 2003). "Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One-Child Policy". Population and Development Review. 29 (2): 163–196. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2003.00163.x.
  3. ^ Judd, Ellen R. (2019-11-04). "Women and China's Revolutions Gail Hershatter Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018 xx + 397 pp. £24.95; $36.00 ISBN 978-1-4422-1569-6". The China Quarterly. 240: 1167–1168. doi:10.1017/s0305741019001279. ISSN 0305-7410. S2CID 211304717.