Stolen Life
Length: 01:30 Type of program: World Cinema
Directed by Li Shaohong (Blush)
China, 90 minutes
Winner — Best Narrative Feature, Tribeca Film Festival
A teenaged girl who was abandoned by her mother at the age of one, and left in the care of her aunt and grandmother, finally flees the subtle humiliation of being unwanted by her family when she is accepted at a prestigious university.
Young, naive and wide-eyed, Yan’ni has barely left home when she meets a handsome and humble young truck driver, who becomes her first lover.The two become inseparable, creating an all-encompassing world of their own. When Yan’ni becomes pregnant, she wants an abortion but acquiesces to her young lover’s pleadings to keep their child. By the time the baby is born, Yan’ni has totally alienated herself from her family and the university, who each shunned her in her state of unwed pregnancy.
As the world conspires to separate her from her child, Yan’ni slowly learns that she has fallen into the heartless baby trafficking machine — rife with class antagonism and misogyny — that usurps the futures of so many young mothers and children in China.
To be released on DVD by First Run Features in 2007 as Part of The Global Lens Collection. To learn more about this film, visit the Global Film Initiative.
CINEMONDO
This film is part of Link TV’s new world cinema series Cinemondo, premiering entertaining and award-winning foreign films from some of the world’s most talented directors. For a full list of films, click here.
Following the broadcast of Stolen Life, Link TV will air two short films:
A Day to Remember (China 2005, 13 minutes)
Directed by Liu Wei
June 4, 2005 marked the 16th anniversary of the student uprising at Tiananmen Squarem, which ended in the death of several students at the hands of the government. Director Liu Wei decides to ask people in the square: What day is today? The responses show that fear of the government may still exist but that the memory of this day remains a strong one.
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam
Cinema du Réel International Festival of Documentary Films
The Price of Youth (By Witness 2000, 9 minutes)
This short examines the recent explosion in systematic trafficking of young girls and women from Nepal to work as prostitutes in Bombay, India. Through the stories of women who were able to escape their forced bondage, The Price of Youth looks at the human experience of sex slavery as well as the grassroots efforts to prevent the traffic and to heal its victims.
-Featured as a "Work in Progress" at the Sundance International Film Festival.
