When thinking about buying something, it’s easy to only think about price and quality, but with many investigations around the world about inhumane labor practices, it’s no wonder that more people would like to look at the companies they’re buying from, or at least buy secondhand when possible. One such investigation is depicted in Letter from Masanjia. While it starts first at the discovery of the letter in Oregon, the true story continues on the other side of the world, through the difficult experiences Sun Yi and his fellow detainees were forced to go through when the Falun Gong movement grew greater in number than the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a harrowing tale, with certain sequences being animated due to a natural lack of footage, and it’s one that needed to be made.

Frankly, the film does downplay the Falun Gong a bit– it's kind of nuts to read later that the group was linked to promoting far-right conspiracy theories and that the leader supposedly can levitate, walk through walls and see into the future. That being said, even if Falun Gong is a cult, I don’t think the members, or anyone, would deserve the torture and inhumane labor that Sun Yi went through.