ONE CHILD NATION – Review

Sundance’s grand jury prize winning documentary ONE CHILD NATION examines the impact of China’s brutally-enforced “One Child” policy, from the viewpoint of people who experienced it. This is an eye-opening documentary about a policy that shaped modern China in many ways, but told from a very personal and human perspective. Director Nanfu Wang was born under China’s One Child policy, which restricted families to one child only from 1979 to 2015, but has lived in the U.S. as an adult. Growing up, she thought little about the policy which seemed a part of ordinary everyday life – until she had a child of her own.

Returning with her infant son to visit family in China, director Wang began to peel back the layers of this pervasive policy by talking to people directly impacted by it – doctors and local officials that enforced it, and family and neighbors who experienced its devastating effects. What Wang uncovers, through personal experiences, is something much darker and deeper than we expect, far beyond an idea for family planning.

While any documentary might have taken a straight-forward historical approach to the one-child policy, Wang’s ONE CHILD NATION focuses on individual people, both those impacted by the policy and those who carried it out. That choice makes this documentary more harrowing and gut-wrenching than a conventional documentary might have been.

As Wang notes, the policy was instituted at a time when China’s large and growing population was sparking fears of famine among Chinese Communist government officials. The policy included a propaganda campaign promoting the “One Child” policy, public social pressures to reinforce that and a host of local government officials and doctors to see that it was strictly enforced. Those enforcement efforts went much further than many suspected, as Wang’s investigation reveals.

Wang takes a very warm and personal approach, starting off by noting that her family was a bit different that most Chinese ones under the One Child policy in that her parents were granted permission to have a second child, an exception sometimes given to rural families like hers. Wang talks about how as a child in China under the policy, it was a source of social embarrassment at school that she had a younger brother. The consequences for having a second child without permission were severe.

The director’s return home with her baby sparks her curiosity about the One Child policy. Wang starts out with just questions for her family about how the now-abandoned policy might have impacted them directly. Her questions reveals a lingering reluctance to discuss the topic, one tinged with fear perhaps, and also lead her to discover a long-held family secret.

She interviews a retired local official who reveals some of the harshness of the policy before her inquiry is shut down with implied threats from the official’s wife. The official describes talks with people and admits that families who violated the policy by having another child often had their houses knocked down but the interview sparks her journalistic curiosity about other consequences. She tracks down a doctor who participated in enforcing the policy, who now helps families with infertility as a form of atonement, and finds that enforcing the ban extended far beyond talks or the destruction of houses the official described.

This is shocking, bracing stuff that makes clear the reason for the reluctance to talk about it. Wang delves into what happened to pregnant women, to babies born in violation of the policy, and the rise of the international adoption industry, which has a darker side than one might expect.

Wang’s focus on person stories and first-hand experience brings home the way this policy impacted people, with more emotional impact than a drier documentary approach would. Wang also expresses her opinion that this restrictive, strictly-enforced government policy limiting families has parallels, through the common theme of government dictating decisions on child-bearing to women, to forces in the U.S. pushing to pass laws restricting access to abortion. Some viewers may disagree but Wang notes that in her opinion both are cases of outsiders intruding in making family decisions.

This deep dive into the One Child policy uncovers how it transformed Chinese society and impacted individuals, an impressive piece of investigative journalism from a personal, human perspective. This is an eye-opening revelatory documentary n

The results of Wang’s inquiry are startling. Her personal investigation takes us deep into this strictly-enforced edict which had a profound impact on the lives of all Chinese people, revealing heartbreaking, even horrifying details about this how this family planning policy was carried out and its consequences. Wang’s skillful, probing style makes us feel like we are going down a deep rabbit hole of secrets long held, connecting dots unsuspected between the one-child policy and its legacy in the present. The searing documentary gives us insights on the people who endured it and the Chinese government that enforced it. ONE CHILD NATION is a revelatory documentary no one should miss.

ONE CHILD NATION opens Friday, Aug. 23, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 4 stars