Sister

A young woman who has lost her parents in a road accident is caught between raising the six-year-old brother she has never felt close to and building her own life. What the record’s summary does not say is the ground that produced the dilemma: An was born in the years when the country allowed families a single child, and her father wanted a son rather than a daughter; the family is even said to have tried to fake a disability for her in order to get permission for a second child. So the film presents what looks like a personal choice as the outcome of a policy and a preference for boys. Yin Ruoxin directed, You Xiaoying wrote the screenplay, and Zhang Zifeng carries the lead. It opened on 2 April 2021 over the family-centred Qingming holiday, took more than fifty-two million dollars in its first weekend and a hundred and thirty-four million overall, and set off a long argument in China about patriarchal expectations.