The Dying Rooms

Under profoundly perilous circumstances, three film makers carefully penetrated deep inside China, where allegations of neglect and abuse of orphan children were rumored but previously undocumented. What co-producers and directors Kate Blewett and Brian Woods, and photographers Brian Woods and Peter Hugh found and recorded with cameras smuggled into the country in pieces and assembled in secret, shocked and enraged the world. As many as one million babies, mostly girls, are abandoned in China each year, the result of the country’s policy mandating only one child per family. A deluge of unwanted babies arrives each year at ill-prepared, poorly-maintained and often mismanaged state orphanages. As this film documents in detail, some children are tied to their beds or potty chairs, other are left to die of starvation or neglect. For investigating a sensitive issue of human rights with resolve, determination and conviction, a Peabody is presented to The Dying Rooms.