About the Pink Cocoon

Chris Berry

I liked that this film is at once personal and socially meaningful. The director records his sister giving birth in hospital, start to finish. Remarks about the way she was treated differently, about being sent away from home after the birth, leave us wondering what exactly happened. Little by little the family’s longing for a son — the director himself — and the old family planning policy surface as the explanation. Beneath the appearance of a harmonious family we feel the tension and the bind that this history has produced. Formally, I admire that the director never pretends to stand outside it, while also declining to place himself too far inside.