On a Tight Rope

This is a lyrical film about four children living in an orphanage in Xinjiang province, China. The children are Uighurs, members of China’s eight million strong largest Muslim minority. To prevent Uighur separatism, China enforces a policy of cultural and political assimilation in Xinjiang: religion is particularly targeted. (Human Rights Watch reports that 10 000 Uighurs are political prisoners, and hundreds have been executed. China claims they are terrorists.) The film shows the reality of the Uighurs through a small story: a story of four Uighur children dreaming of becoming champion tightrope walkers, an ancient Uighur tradition, which becomes a metaphor for the lives of all Uighurs whose lives are balancing acts in their attempts to preserve their language and Muslim identity against the persecution of the Chinese Communist state.