This animated poem by CalArts student filmmaker Shiyu Tang has done very well on the festival circuit for good reason: it doesn’t give away all its secrets on a first watch or even a third. Dedicated “To the sisters we never had a chance to meet,” it takes a deeply personal look at female infanticide and abortions in China, with a kind of Notes section at the end to help orient an international audience. My only criticism is that some of the subtitles didn’t linger on-screen long enough for me to read them all on the first viewing, but aside from that, it was a pitch-perfect film, I thought.

Shiyu Tang is clearly a poetry filmmaker to watch. In addition to her Vimeo page, she’s got a channel on YouTube, an active Instagram account, and a website where she describes herself as an “Independent animator, whose works are mostly based on social phenomena and female perspectives.”