Baby - CinemAsia

During the ’90s, a steep rise in abandoned children (the majority being girls or babies with health defects) forced the government to pay poor families to provide foster homes for them. One of them is Jiang Meng (Yang Mi) who at 18, is forced by law to move out of her foster family. At the hospital where she works, she encounters a baby girl born with the same congenital illness as herself. When she overhears the father choosing to forgo treatment to let her die, nothing can stop her from saving this fragile life.

Arthouse veteran Liu Jie’s masterpiece examines the consequences of China’s onechild policy, exposing the rigidity of China’s state welfare, discrimination of women and the disabled. At the heart of this tragedy is an ethical tug of war between universal human rights and the Confucian conviction that parents have a heavenly mandate over their children’s existence. Devastating yet brimming with tender compassion, the unpredictable fate of the baby is fuel for truly polished psychodrama.