Laogai: Prison Nation - Inside China's Ruling System
28/03/2023
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Tsetung established a system of labor camps for systematic repression, known as Laogai, an abbreviation for "Reform Through Labor". In such camps, forced labor and physical and mental torture were used to bring about a so-called mental reform, re-education in the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party. Millions of Chinese were affected. Many were executed. In hundreds of camps, the Party took advantage of the prisoners' free labor to build the economy. Self-criticism and denunciation were often the only way to escape martyrdom. Successive waves of purges culminated in the Cultural Revolution, which saw massive human rights abuses, political assassinations, massacres, and exiles in remote parts of the country. Using unreleased archive footage, the documentary tells the story of the invention, development and improvement of China's totalitarian system of surveillance and repression up to the present day, never told before.
Cast
Camille Sannes
Self - Narrator (voice)
Ai Weiwei
Self - Interviewee
Ren Wanding
Self - Interviewee
Wang Juntao
Self - Interviewee
Li Shuying
Self - Interviewee
Wei Zidan
Self - Interviewee
Ping Hu
Self - Interviewee
Wei Jingsheng
Self - Interviewee
Gulbahar Haitwaji
Self - Interviewee
Xiao Qiang
Self - Interviewee
Tong Yi
Self - Interviewee
Teng Biao
Self - Interviewee
Liao Yiwu
Self - Interviewee
Cai Changguo
Self - Interviewee
Song Yongyi
Self - Interviewee
Xu Youyu
Self - Interviewee
Mai Gang
Self - Interviewee
Feng Guojiang
Self - Interviewee
Chen Pokong
Self - Interviewee
David Li
Self - Interviewee
Liu Qing
Self - Interviewee
Wang Dan
Self - Interviewee
Mao Zedong
Self (archive footage)
Deng Xiaoping
Self (archive footage)
Xi Jinping
Self (archive footage)
Jiang Zemin
Self (archive footage)
Liu Shaoqi
Self (archive footage)
Zhou Enlai
Self (archive footage)
Kang Sheng
Self (archive footage)
Lin Biao
Self (archive footage)
Philippe Bozo
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Jean-Pol Brissart
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Marc Brunet
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Bernard Demory
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Yumi Fujimori
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Michel Laroussi
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Martial Le Minoux
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Tony Marot
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Jean-Pascal Quilichini
Self - Additional Voice (voice)
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