To me, the One-Child policy made sense when I was younger and didn't know any better. Fix overpopulation and hearken Malthus by limiting household size. Easy, right? This wasn't America after all; individual liberties are fewer in Communist China...because...isn't it for the good of the collective and not the individual? To my understanding, most of the Chinese were just banding together and willingly sacrificing for their country.

The movie paints an entirely different picture. Yes, there were those believed they were rightful functioning as an extension of the Red policy. Yet, almost every single person that Wang interviews had to preface recollections of the forced sterilizations and abortions with four haunting words: "I had no choice."

This movie investigates the intersect between acting willfully for your country and its opposite: being forced to do what are considered "necessary evils" for the longevity of the country.

Wang is skeptical that any of this suffering needed to happen to begin with. She provides a counter-narrative to the Communist state, wondering if the mountains of abandoned girl babies were left to die in vain. In retrospect, the policy's dubious reasons point more towards a mindless allegiance to leadership than any saving grace from starvation. That's how the movie is presented, at least.

Definitely worth the watch.

I was always fascinated by the theme, and it deserves treatment. But documentaries are not supposed to be propaganda, explore just one angle, reinforce its purpose for 90 minutes. Things I have NOT found here:

• When/how was the policy created?
• What happened to China's population and economy during its tennure?
• Could the same reasoning have generated a better execution of a similar process? In a democratic country?
• Any similar experiences to compare? Is population control in general important these days? Or did the China policy buried it?
• Any idea of how China would be today with 8 billion people? The good. The bad.

Wow. It is a wild ride reading the comments here. There are some genuine ones that praise the documentary and those that point out its strengths and weaknesses and criticize them in articulately and poignantly.

Others still... are calling the movie itself a propaganda while trying to gaslight the documentarian. I'm seeing a lot of comments that go something like: "the one child policy was generally a bad thing, however [...]". However, what? It was a demented social 'experiment' to forcibly control the population by all means necessary which involved inhumane doctrine taking away civil liberty. There is no excuse. I can think of at LEAST one other major catastrophic event similar to this in our lifetime that attempted, and partially succeeded, at this. HMM.

It is explicitly stated that people are afraid to speak about specific events on camera because they do not want to become enemies of the state. It is crazy to me that people will sit here, completely removed from the world and the lives depicted on the documentary, and say "no, I don't think this actually happened." You don't have to look far to see articles upon articles on how sterilizations and abortions were forced in this era. It is factual. Denying this happened is tantamount to denying the Holocaust.

There are many reviews that claim that the documentarian is a hypocrite because she promotes autonomy over a woman's own body while denouncing forced abortions and sterilizations. These reviews liken a woman's choice to abort her fetus to state-regulated forced abortions. WHAT? Did I seriously read that correctly? There are really reviews here calling her a hypocrite and that a woman's choice to abort her fetus (whatever her reason may be) is just as bad as a state forcing it upon an unwilling woman.

I'm gonna call it like I see it - I think many of these reviews are propaganda from the Chinese government or sympathizers.