One Child Nation

Nanfu Wang was born in China during the time of the nation's one-child policy. After emigrating to the USA and falling pregnant with her first child, Jamie, Wang returns to China to find out what the impact of this "population war" was on ordinary families across the country.

Between 1979 and 2015, the Chinese government implemented a policy declaring at each family could only have one child, though this was later amended to say that if the first-born child was a girl, they could try once more for a boy. After observing how across China's history, the government filtered information available to the public, Wang did not want this to be another thing brushed under the carpet and never fully understood by today's generation. Beginning with her own family and then expanding to those around her, Wang conducts a series of interviews to try and understand a time in which the protection of the life that grew in one's uterus could not always be guaranteed. She sheds light on a harrowing era in which forced abortions and sterilisations were not out of the question and several innocent newborns were left to their deaths in her unflinching record.

'One Child Nation', part investigation into a heartbreaking aspect of China's history and part familial exploration, took home the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival.