I had no idea this was actually a film since I watched a shortened version of it on a German media outlet.
It was a huge eyeopener nonetheless. It's hard to find critical information about the shadows around the CCP. But this captured one of them quite well, and that is how the Chinese government likes to handle disease(s).
I was quite shocked to learn about this AIDS epidemic that was caused by infected medical equipment for blood donors. Something that I'm sure the government there works very hard at covering up. Very disturbing to say the least...
The film was captured and put together very well. I don't even think there was any actual acting involved, since the film consists of mainly raw footage revolving around the struggles of living in an impoverished part of China.
There is a certain rawness in documentaries that I think some people can appreciate that is outside of Hollywood FX and scripts. Ximei is definitely one of those types of films.
It looked like the filmmakers were haggled by local authorities there. Fortunately, they were still able to gather enough footage for a full documentary. So there was some added risk here for this lady to get some public exposure.
I would definitely recommend people to watch this. Not to try and generate a bias against the Chinese government, but more so to make people aware of disease, and how hard it makes life for people. Particularly in this case since it wasn't exactly self inflicted.
To close this off, this documentary brought tears to my eyes. I have pretty thick skin, so the fact it could do that, it says a lot. Given that C19 has ultimately changed most of the world now, this film reminded me that no matter how dark things might be, there's still a goodness that can be found within humanity.
