David Farnor | On 04, Feb 2019

The Sundance Film Festival may be over for 2019, but Amazon hasn’t quite finished its spending spree, with one more film on its shopping list: One Child Nation.

The film, directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, follows Wang’s 2016 Sundance doc Hooligan Sparrow, which exposed human rights abuses in China. One Child Nation follows a similar crusading quest, as Wang tries to unmask the tightly held secrets of China’s one-child policy, which officially ended in 2015. Wang, now a first-time mother, explores her own family’s past as well as exposes revelations from journalists, officials and activists, uncovering stories of sterilisation, child abandonment, and kidnappings.

The movie won the Grand Jury Prize U.S. Documentary Award at the weekend, and Amazon swiftly moved to buy the film. Amazon Studios has snapped up the worldwide rights to the film, excluding the US TV and TV rights in the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Austria.

It joins a number of other Amazon Studios acquisitions at Sundance, including Mindy Kaling’s Late Night, Adam Driver thriller The Report, breakout comedy-drama Brittany Runs a Marathon and Shia LaBeouf’s semi-autobiographical Honey Boy. Including One Child Nation, Amazon has spent almost $50 million in snapping up films in Sundance this past fortnight, as it looks to repeat its success from acquiring Manchester by the Sea two years ago.

Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Add to Watchlist