The Dissident’s Wife | Li Wenzu takes on the Chinese State | DW | 2020

In 2015, human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang vanished without a trace. His wife Li Wenzu assumed he’d been detained but had no certainty for several months. She would not let herself be intimidated and went public with the case.

Li Wenzu quickly realized her husband wasn’t the only one. Dozens of attorneys had disappeared the same day along with many activists. It had been a genuine mass arrest. But the authorities had obviously not anticipated her response. She wrote articles and posted them on the internet, contacted supporters and politicians abroad and set the machinery of all the official channels in motion. She was paid one visit after another by the state security, who threatened and tried to intimidate her. But how was she to explain the situation to their son? Mathias Bölinger accompanied Li Wenzu through part of this difficult time.

The film has been awarded a Merit at the Human Rights Press Awards 2021.