Read: How people decide whether to have children

China is not alone in grappling with the tension between women’s increased life opportunities and anxieties over the resulting fall in birth rates: Around the world, as women gain access to education and employment, they marry later and have fewer children. Even now that China’s one-child policy has been relaxed—because of fears that the population is aging and there will not be enough workers to look after the elderly—the film’s lead director, Shosh Shlam, found that many women were reluctant to have multiple children. “It’s very expensive,” Shlam told me. “And they are used to single children.” Because state support for parenthood is inadequate, Qiu added, “mothers have to stay at home to look after the kids; your career will have to be sacrificed.”

The role of the government in dictating women’s fertility is highly contested globally. Populists of all persuasions point to falling birth rates as a sign of national decline. “Every woman should have six children for the good of the country,” the left-wing Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, said in a speech on March 4. (About 13 percent of Venezuelan children are malnourished.) Last year, the right-wing Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, promised tax breaks to mothers of more than four children. “We do not need numbers,” he said, referring to immigrants. “We need Hungarian children.” Poland, Lithuania, and Serbia all offer financial incentives for larger families.

The existence of pro- and anti-natalist policies bolsters one of the cornerstones of feminist analysis: Throughout history, and across cultures, women’s bodies have been treated as a communal resource for creating the citizens of the future—and therefore states try to control women’s lives to influence their reproductive capacity. Formerly, that control largely took the form of restricting women’s access to education, or banning them from certain jobs. Today, it manifests more subtly as social pressure suggesting that “fulfillment” comes only from marriage and children.

Leftover Women begins with Qiu visiting a Beijing dating agency. She has high standards for a man, she tells a matchmaker there. He must be highly educated, willing to share the housework, and respectful of women. In mathematical terms, husband-hunting in China ought to be a buyer’s market: Far more men than women are looking for love. But that is not Qiu’s experience. “Sorry if I’m being too straightforward,” the matchmaker replies, “but you’re not beautiful in the traditional sense … Also, you’re old.” This is the first of many startling examples of the harsh judgments Qiu faces.

The Chinese government’s one-child policy, in place from 1980 to 2016, combined with the widespread belief that a male child is more valuable, led to sex-selective abortions. The country now has an estimated 30 million “extra” men—many of whom will never find a partner. The state sees this as a threat to national stability. “The Chinese government is very paranoid of any group that might be a threat to them,” Shlam told me. Qiu says that the sex imbalance “makes men desperate,” contributing to violence against women who reject potential boyfriends. Shlam pointed out that it has led to an abundance of sex tourism to nearby countries such as Myanmar and Laos.