‘Total Trust’ Director Jialing Zhang Opens Up About First Major Film on Chinese State Surveillance (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comLise Pedersen Documentary filmmaker Jialing Zhang, who was nominated for an Emmy for “One Child Nation,” spoke to Variety about her latest film, “Total Trust,” which is running in the main competition at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen Intl.
Documentary Festival. It tells the chilling story of three women and their families fighting for their human rights in China, where state control is ubiquitous thanks to high technology surveillance, such as facial recognition, big data analysis and points systems that mean citizens gain or lose points depending on their behavior.
Zhang’s intimate footage offers unprecedented access to the impact of this all-controlling system on the protagonists’ everyday lives. “We didn’t just want to do a film about surveillance but about the people living in this kind of society.
We wanted to reach a certain emotional depth and complexity – to try to grasp the anger, the horror, but also the hope, through the resilience of our characters who continue to fight for human rights, freedom and safety, for themselves and their loved ones, and have actually been transformed by the situation they find themselves in,” she says.
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