2019 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: #15. Nanfu Wang & Lynn Zhang – Born in China (Docu)

Working in an almost doc per year pace since launching big with the award winning Hooligan Sparrow (double winner at the Cinema Eye Honors Awards), Nanfu Wang teams with Lynn Zhang for Born in China – a recent recipient of Sundance Institute Documentary Fund and Stories of Change grantees. The project is shot in “cinéma vérité across the entire country, the film will paint a vivid picture of China’s unique and diverse landscape and culture.”

Gist: Nearly 40 years after China enacted one of the most brutal population-control policies in history – the infamous “one-child” policy, aimed at launching China “from poverty to prosperity” – Born In China explores the ongoing human consequences of that policy, through the lives of Chinese mothers who were forced to have abortions; American families who adopted children who had been stolen from their mothers; Communist party officials who gave the orders and the foot soldiers who carried them out.

Production Co./Producers: Nanfu Wang, Lynn Zhang, Motto Pictures’ Julie Goldman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry), Christoph Jörg (Winnie).

Prediction: U.S. Documentary Competition

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international).