I stumbled across this documentary on Amazon Prime Video, and I’m so grateful for having done so. I have a deep passion for any socio-political question concerning China and surely the One Child Policy (OCP hereafter) has caught my attention since the first time I heard about it. During the semester I spent at Fudan University (should have been two… thanks Covid -.-) I had the chance to be part of the “China Social Security” course, and the OCP was a recurring element of the various lessons. For those who don’t know, the OCP was a succession of birth control policies to which the Chinese government had subjected its citizens over a period ranging from 1979 to 2013.

One Child Nation is directed by Nanfu Wang, and I really liked her approach: intense, rough, tragically realistic. The documentary begins with her recalling the memory of her homeland, through the eyes and voices of her relatives. There is no abrupt political condemnation, but rather there is an intimate narrative of one’s personal, painful experience, as Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang (the co-director) were born during the application of the OCP. However, despite this condition, the two artists knew very little of the pain that was hidden behind the silence of millions of mothers of that time: they families were part of privileged rural ones and, precisely for this reason, they had never experienced all that suffering firsthand.

There is a clear and intimate personal research in this movie. Before being a fully-fledged political accusation, Wang and Zhang’s documentary is a family tale that has subsequently turned into a choral narrative of one of the biggest and most cruel social experiments ever conceived. The main narrative tool used consists of interviews, portraying a large number of individuals who had directly experienced the tragedy of the OCP. Notably, the interviewees are only common people and no political legislators: this is unfortunate but obvious… I think no explanation is needed here.

In One Child Nation, there is no room for any form of censorship. Hollow faces, framed by wrinkles, individuals who narrate the crimes they had witnessed or perpetrated in first person – for example, a former midwife admits to having forced mothers to abortions, or a former family “planner” claims to have no remorse and to be firmly convinced of the rightfulness of her actions. Why, after all, can’t we say that the OCP has helped China improving its overall social structure to become the world power we know today? Is it ethically correct to sacrifice the lives of millions of children for the higher good? Citizens’ welfare has increased, but was it really worth it? Wang is not afraid to ask uncomfortable, at times contradictory questions: her investigation is intended to shed light on the truth, not to look for common sense. She dedicates no space to trivial details.

One Child Nation emerges, therefore, as a documentary in which lights and shadows are intertwined, even indistinguishable, in which the concept of legality seems to waver and no clear definition can be given. The documentary highlights all the tortures, forced abortions and sterilizations, children trafficking and neglect, but not only: the movie continues depicting the alleged silver linings advocated by family planning supporters. Nanfu Wang is not afraid to get naked, telling a truth – the truth about her – that could be despised by many. She is not afraid of being controversial, insecure, complex, human.

One Child Nation has received many enthusiastic reviews worldwide and it was nominated for the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary. Personally, I cannot but recommend it to everyone.