HAO SI BU RU LAI HUO ZHE

AIDS is just one of many well-kept secrets of the People’s Republic of China. In 1990, hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken farmers from the Henan province in Central China sold their blood to illegal blood merchants who were using dirty equipment. The result was a mass infection with HIV in the region.

This film is about a family destroyed by the virus. Ma Lei was one of the first Henan men to contract AIDS. He passed the disease on to his wife. The youngest two of his three children are also infected.

Director Chen Wijun spent almost an entire year with the family. He follows their physical, mental and social disintegration. During the shooting, Ma’s wife died, while her baby was learning to walk.

To Live is Better Than To Die was made illegally. More than once, Chinese authorities confiscated Chen’s material; he was chased out of the village where he was filming four times, sneaking back in under the cover of night. The result of his efforts is a truthful and horrifying look at a part of Chinese reality that officially is not supposed to exist.

The film received standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival. 

"Unsurprisingly, To Live is Better Than To Die is the kind of film that makes the Chinese authorities squirm. (…)In one scene, the Mas' infant son crawls beneath the splintered wheelbarrow where his AIDS-stricken mother lies dying, her moans of pain mingling with his gurgling attempts at language. Such unexpected images are jarring in a country where censors aim never to show China's ugly side." Susan Jakes