Shot over eight years, OUTCRY AND WHISPER is a highly personal and sometimes uncomfortably intimate documentary chronicling women’s oppression and resistance in mainland China and Hong Kong. One remarkable and tumultuous sequence is shot in the midst of Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations.

Co-director Jinyan Zeng—the filmmaker who confronts those tailing her—records striking acts of resistance while also sharing excerpts from her own video diary, in which she talks about her separation from her activist ex-husband and the different kinds of sexual abuse she faces. Female workers—often from rural provinces, who have come to big cities to work—share their stories of being placed under surveillance for organizing, and being arrested by police working in concert with factory owners.