One Child Nation                              4 ½ stars

One Child Nation is a documentary about a subject we have all heard something about but that very few of us know the whole story.  The filmmaker, Nanfu Wang tells us in very personal terms about China’s policy of allowing families to have only a single child in the name of improving the productivity of the country.  This policy, that lasted from 1979 until 2015 was responsible for many thousands of forced abortions, sterilizations, infanticide and government abductions of children from their parents.  The film was thoroughly researched and tells the story through many personal interviews with those who were forced to carry out the government policy and with those directly affected by it.  Wang was personally affected by it as she was born in China during the policy and had a younger brother who might have been lost if he had turned out to be a girl.  Wang herself has a boy’s name because her family was hoping for a boy, which is the much preferred gender to have as children.  In the nineties when international adoptions opened up in China, the government started the practice of forcing children to be separated from their parents and placed in orphanages where they could then be allowed to be adopted by western parents.  The film is an important one to see as it shows what an authoritarian government can be capable of.  This is the second documentary from Wang who was only in her early thirties when it was made.  Her films which were filmed in China has brought her unwelcome attention from the Chinese government.  The interviews are done in Chinese, but her narration is all done in English.  Let’s hope that she continues her good work in the future.