How do individual activists, and a filmmaker, outwit and bring to light the Chinese security apparatus? This film begins with the compelling account of a group of Chinese women activists protesting a school principal’s brazen sexual abuse of young girls. Audacious filmmaker Nanfu Wang accompanies and documents the women, who carry out their bold demonstrations despite constant harassment by Chinese security officers. When the filmmaker also finds herself under surveillance, she continues to shoot video and record audio in defiance of police orders to stop. The film conveys the visceral, cloak-and-dagger threat that is the day-to-day reality for people picked out for scrutiny by a watchful state. The already high stakes of making the film are further raised by the genuine heroics of the human rights activists at the heart of the story: Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow), her daughter Lan Yaxin, and lawyer Wang Yu. The film vividly connects their remarkable story to dissident artist Ai Weiwei.  NK