Kritiken

There’s the personal, there’s the political, and then there’s the kind of story that Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s One Child Nation, out now, tells—the kind that dissolves the distinction.

Edited with exceptional clarity and economy.

This quietly devastating document is so powerful precisely because it avoids being sensational or overtly critical.

Wang and Zhang tread a wide scope and take on a beast of a subject, but One Child Nation is refreshingly (and forcefully) modest and human-scaled. Simple, direct, and never sensationalistic in their approach, the co-directors maintain their focus on the theft of autonomy—especially that of women, over their bodies and lives—that has left a whole generation feeling helpless.

In telling her own story and the country’s, Wang has achieved a work of investigation, personal revelation, historical reckoning, and overarching political morality.

What we learn is fascinating and troubling, albeit within a narrow range. . . . There’s a shadow story here, about how an authoritarian government can, with the will and the resources, construct a ghastly policy apparatus so overwhelming it can not be effectively resisted or even questioned. 

Soul-baring and furious, the documentary “One Child Nation” takes a powerful, unflinching look at China’s present through its past.

As the ending of One Child Nation makes explicit, the remnants of the one-child era are already in the process of being erased—and so this film remains a worthwhile oral history all the same.