"Sister" puts the spotlight on Chinese families' traditional preference for sons
Should a daughter's duty to her family take precedence over her own independent life? This is the question posed by director Yin Ruoxin in Sister, which tackles the tensions between familial duty and personal values, as well as the traditional preference for sons in China.
The relatively low budget film has been an unexpected hit, raking in over 520 million RMB at the box office since its release on April 1, outperforming Hollywood blockbuster Godzilla vs. Kong.
Yin's movie follows 24-year-old An Ran (Zhang Zifeng), who finds herself torn between raising the 6-year-old brother she barely knows and moving to the city to pursue further studies after their parents die in a car crash. An Ran faces relentless pressure from her extended family to sacrifice her own pursuits to provide for An Ziheng (Jin Yaoyuan), whose future is deemed more important for the family.
Yang Tingting is a Chinese editor at The World of Chinese. Interested in telling Chinese stories, she writes mainly about culture, language, and society.
