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UK Premiere: Leftover Women (12A*) + ScreenTalk

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2020

A woman dressed in pink on her wedding day

This eye-opening documentary follows three women in their gruelling quest to find a husband, weighing the cost of family and society’s approval against their own chances of happiness.

In China, unmarried women over the age of 27 are deemed “sheng nu” or “leftover”. As an effect of the now-defunct one-child policy there are 30 million more men than women, leaving single women under immense social pressures to marry, and fast, or be rejected from society.

Public dating contests, “marriage markets” where city sidewalks are lined with parents advertising their children’s attributes, and government-sponsored matchmaking festivals are just some of the humiliating ordeals that unwed women face.

Following the screening we welcome Dr. Sun Jinyu, writer on gender issues in China and Hong Kong, hosted by Rothna Begum, Senior Researcher, Women's Rights Division, HRW

Israel 2019 Dir Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia 84 min

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Barbican Cinema 2