Wang Bing: Three Sisters (2012)

Winner of the 2017 Eye Art & Film Prize Wang Bing’s Three Sisters (2012) is a documentary film following siblings Yingying, 10, Zhenzhen, 6, and Fenfen, 4, whose mother abandoned them to be looked after by their father, a peasant, in Xiyangtang (a village in the mountains of Yunnan province) where the girls undertake chores (such as herding pigs and sheep and collecting firewood or dung) in exchange for meals from their relatives. Shot using handheld footage, Wang Bing’s film continues to spotlight the plight and poverty of rural China with a compassionate eye, while taking a critical position on the illusion of the government’s plans for a celebrated ‘Rural Revival’. When the girls’ father takes his youngest daughters with him to the city where he works, Ying Ying is left alone to face an uncertain and bleak future.