From 1979 to 2015, there was a regime very much like that in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but instead of prohibiting abortions, it mandated them—along with involuntary sterilization (of mothers, not fathers). When China’s notorious one-child policy was in full effect, the communist regime relentlessly intruded into bedrooms and families’ lives. The draconian mandate has been relaxed to a “two-child policy,” but the guilt and emotional pain persist for the parents who were forced to comply. Filmmakers Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang expose the resulting trauma, both on a national level and within Wang’s own family throughout “One Child Nation,” which was released in the United States on Jan. 26, 2019.
Photos of babies who were abandoned in communist China due to its one-child policy, as presented in the documentary “One Child Nation," winner of the Grand Jury Prize for US Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival Awards on Feb. 2, 2019. Nanfu Wang/Courtesy of Sundance Institute
