AFI FEST Los Angeles International Film Festival 2009

Zhao Liang filmed this documentary, without permission, over more than a decade, building a harrowing testimony of suffering on the part of Chinese citizens who spend years of their lives appealing various injustices and abuses committed by Chinese authorities. Zhao used hidden cameras to record the plight of these petitioners—farmers expelled from their land, citizens whose homes were destroyed without compensation, a fierce widow who has sacrificed her daughter’s education to pursue her quest for justice. Filming continued until the eve of the Beijing Olympics, when the image-conscious Chinese government destroyed their dwellings and displaced the petitioners. Activist filmmaking at its most courageous and tenacious, PETITION conveys the idealism and struggles of a vast population seeking a new moral center, while the culture around them strains under massive economic shifts.

–Rose Kuo