During the film, the audience gradually learns about An’s hardships, such as having to pretend to be disabled so her parents could be granted permission by authorities to have a second child in the years before China lifted its one-child policy in 2015.
The film was created by two women, director Yin Ruoxin and screenwriter You Xiaoying. Both of them have explored Chinese family dynamics in their previous works.
You, the screenwriter, told The Beijing News that, even though she is a single child, the idea for the film stems from experiences her friends shared when China allowed births of a second child in 2015.
“I saw that there were a lot of conflicts and struggles in these families, I wanted to explore why,” she said.
She said An, who is beginning to start her career as a nurse, is conflicted by a desire to pursue her own life while still needing emotional support after her parents’ deaths.
As An grapples with whether to ignore her extended family and pursue independence, the audience is left with a sense of ambivalence, realising the main character’s decision might not be obvious.
The film had provoked a heated public discussion, with the topic being read over 320 million times on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, as of Tuesday afternoon.
Many users expressed empathy for An, saying they shared similar experiences when they were growing up.
A commenter on Douban, a social network focusing on entertainment discussions, said she once pretended to be sick so her parents could get permission to have a son.
“I am a similar sister whose life was changed because of the birth of a little brother … I have lived similar scenes and exact dialogues from the film. It is suffocating,” she wrote.
The film drew comments from renowned scholars, such as Li Yinhe, a pioneering sociologist studying sex and gender roles in China. In a lengthy post on Weibo, she described the movie as “a profound work based on solid social reality”.
Li said that besides gender inequality, the film also explored the conflict between filial piety and individualism in a modernised society.
“So it becomes a Hamletian dilemma … should we pursue individual values, or sacrifice them for our families? The film has placed its protagonist in a violent ethical and emotional conflict, which is thought-provoking,” she wrote.
The movie is also a coming-out party for Yin and You, who were unknown by mainstream film-goers before My Sister.
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