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In ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS, 22-year-old Wang Qiong boldly explores how her family’s troubled relationships intersect with the ongoing consequences of China’s one-child policy.

Having given birth to two girls, Qiong’s mother was desperate for a boy. Pregnant with Jin, her third daughter, she had a late-term abortion — but baby Jin survived. Jin’s parents abandoned her in the town and later in the woods, where she survived for a week, in the desperate hope another family could take her in. Jin’s paternal grandmother exhorted her son-in-law, Jin’s uncle, to bring her home and raise her on his farm. Years later, as a teenager, Jin returned to live with her birth family.

Not surprisingly, Jin’s relationships — with her parents, her sisters, her husband, and her own young son — are troubled. She is never at ease, never sure what she wants, never quite at home. Speaking to Qiong, Jin refers to their parents as “your parents” and to her siblings as “your family.” ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS observes the life of the family at a critical time: Jin and her husband launch a new business after going bankrupt; Li, the eldest daughter, is pregnant and will likely have an abortion if she learns she’s carrying another girl; and Sifan, the son Jin’s parents finally had, is failing at school while feeling guilty about Jin’s troubled dynamic with her birth family. 

Qiong set out to make ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS as a way to investigate family trauma. Her intimate, powerful interviews with her parents and siblings, and her steadfast eye for detail and telling moments, elevate the film from family history to a meditation on the brutal ramifications of the one-child policy at its peak.