Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline involving slow-moving meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. Asian cultures have a long tradition of such practices for health and spiritual well-being, similar to Tai Chi and Qigong.

Falun Gong gained enormous popularity after its introduction in China in the early 1990s. By 1998, an estimated 70 million people were practicing it — surpassing Communist Party membership. Feeling threatened by the scale and independence of the movement, the CCP launched a violent crackdown in 1999. Practitioners have since faced arrest, imprisonment, torture, and forced labor in camps like Masanjia.

During production on his previous documentary about human rights in China, Leon Lee became interested in the story of a Chinese political prisoner who had made international headlines. After the letter was discovered by Julie Keith in Oregon in 2012, Leon tracked down Sun Yi, and the two began a covert, years-long collaboration across borders.

Leon Lee is considered a Chinese dissident for his human rights work and could not enter China to film. Sun Yi therefore trained himself to use a hidden camera and secretly documented his own life under surveillance. His footage forms the heart of the film — an act of extraordinary courage.

Sun Yi was an avid reader of traditional Chinese graphic novels from a young age and practiced drawing in book margins throughout his life. When filming was impossible — particularly for scenes inside Masanjia — animated sequences based on his own drawings were used to tell those parts of his story.

Jiang Tianyong is an internationally recognized Chinese human rights lawyer who has defended wrongly imprisoned activists, Tibetans, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners. He appears in the film, and his own detention by the Chinese government is a powerful thread woven through this story.