Petition, by Zhao Liang

For twelve years Zhao Liang has filmed the “petitioners”, who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses and injustices committed by the local authorities. Gathered near the complaints offices, around the southern railway station of Beijing, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation. Faced with the most brutal intimidation from the local authorities, the complainants stubbornly continue despite everything. Zhao Liang has accompanied several of them, particularly a mother and her daughter, whose story we follow over ten years.

“These ‘petitions’ were first filed by those who were expropriated, most often peasants, who have lost their land. Yet soon ‘the plaintiffs’ started to arrive also from other social strata. One of the characters of my film is also a solicitor who represented the ‘plaintiffs’. But the government has revoked his license, thus making him a ‘plaintiff’ himself.”