One Child Nation (2019)

China famously had a one child policy for decades which is not news to anybody paying much attention, but the extent that local officials went to to enforce this policy, that is the shocking part.  This powerful and upsetting documentary examines the legacy of a brutal policy that limited couples to a single baby.
China’s “one-child” policy lasted from 1979 to 2015 (to be replaced by the two-child maximum, still in force) and is revealed in this powerful documentary to be a cruel and tragic experiment in big-government meddling, a colossal and yet intimate abuse of the family by the state whose aftereffects have still to be reckoned with.  The thing that I did not fully understand was that there was not wide-spread birth control available and abortion, sometimes very late in the pregnancy as to be infanticide, was routinely practiced.  The film interviews a variety of people who were involved in the rural enforcement of the ban and it is quite moving.