Total Trust

The surveillance society in China has reached new, brutal heights. In the documentary TOTAL TRUST, we are presented with some of the heartbreaking destinies in a country approaching George Orwell's darkest predictions.

One Child Nation director Jialing Zhang, an exile from her homeland, has once again made a gripping and shocking documentary from China, using anonymised cinematographers. This time she focuses on the fate of three human rights activists who have variously ended up in prison as a result of the authorities' increasingly violent surveillance of their own citizens. As surveillance cameras continue to pop up and the authorities tighten their grip on their citizens by collecting vast amounts of personal data, relationships between neighbours, family members and friends are also changing. What is masqueraded as technological advances and a more easygoing society is beginning to destroy the citizens' safety and privacy.

«It is an urgent, gripping and frightening film, and serves as much as a warning for the rest of the world as it describes China and its increasing authoritarianism.»
– Vladan Petkovic, Cineuropa –

Jon Sæter

The Critical Room: China in a technological iron grip

Ahead of the screening of TOTAL TRUST on Thursday NOV 16 at 18.00 in Tancred at the Cinematheque in Oslo, there will be a conversation about China in a technological iron grip.

The conversation will be in English.

Director

Jialing Zhang is a Chinese producer and director living in exile in the USA. Her films have received numerous international awards, and for her last film, One Child Nation, she won The Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

This film is part of