Luke Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, examines how independently produced Chinese documentaries enter the Anglophone market, using Wang Jiuliang's award-winning film Plastic China as his case study. He traces the Sundance-K'Nex workshops that train Chinese filmmakers for overseas audiences, and shows how story becomes a commodity shaped by NGO funding logics and the Open Society Foundation's involvement. Walking through Plastic China's two families and its focus on a child's right to education, Robinson argues the film narrows a structural critique of waste and labor into personal narrative, harmonising contradiction rather than confronting it. He reports UK audience reactions after screenings, where viewers described feeling moved or shocked but favored individual action over systemic change, and closes by situating these responses within liberal frameworks for understanding China's place in the world system. The lecture ends on the compromises such cross-border collaboration demands of independent Chinese documentary.