Under the Dome (film)

Under the Dome
Pollution in Chengdu in 2014, as depicted in Under the Dome
穹顶之下 (qióngdǐng zhī xià)
Directed by	Ming Fan
Produced by	Chai Jing
Cinematography	Xinqiang Hou
Release date	28 February 2015 (2015-02-28)
Running time	104 minutes
Country	China
Language	Mandarin
Budget	CN¥1m (US$160,000)[1]

Under the Dome (Chinese: 穹顶之下; pinyin: Qióngdǐng zhī xià) is a 2015 self-financed Chinese documentary by Chai Jing, a former China Central Television journalist, and Ming Fan,^[2] the documentary director, her long-term working partner at CCTV, concerning air pollution in China. It was viewed over 150 million times on Tencent within three days of its release and had been viewed a further 150 million times by the time it was taken offline four days later.

Chai Jing started making the documentary when her as yet unborn daughter developed a tumor in the womb, which had to be removed very soon after her birth. Chai blames China's air pollution for the tumor. The film, which combines footage of a lecture with interviews and factory visits, has been compared with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in both its style and potential impact. The film openly criticizes state-owned energy companies, steel producers and coal factories, as well as showing the inability of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to act against the big polluters.

Despite demonstrating the failure of China's regulations on pollution, the Chinese government at first did not censor the film. Instead, the People's Daily reposted the film alongside an interview with Chai, while Chen Jining, the recently appointed minister for environmental protection, praised the film, expressing in a text message his gratitude.^[3] However, within a week, the Communist Party’s publicity department confidentially ordered the film to be removed. An employee of China Business News was suspended for leaking the order.