A trailer has landed for “All Eyes and Ears,” Vanessa Hope’s documentary feature debut. Hope told Women and Hollywood that she hopes the film “will stand the test of time as one of the more definitive looks at the U.S.-China relationship and its international implications ever made.”
The tense spot for the film focuses on the strained relationship between the countries, and how Beijing is “increasingly at odds with Washington” over arms sales and currency, among other issues. But the trailer also has a more personal story. “Out of the blue, my husband said I’m warming up to the idea of a little girl from China,” says Mary Kaye Cooper, wife of U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman.
Interweaving the stories of Huntsman, “his adopted Chinese daughter, Gracie Mei, and blind legal advocate Chen Guangcheng, ‘All Eyes and Ears’ is a timely exploration into the complex links between the U.S. and China,” the film’s official synopsis reads. The doc “evokes the personal and the international with its accent on diplomacy, activism, and individual experience.” The story “follows Huntsman and his family during his tenure as ambassador and traces Chen Guangcheng’s journey from being under house arrest to his highly publicized asylum at the U.S. Embassy, highlighting the activist’s thoughts on China’s ambitions as an emergent world power.”
“The U.S. and China are the two most powerful players in global affairs,” Hope emphasized in the interview with Women and Hollywood. “When I tell people this next line, I know it’s hard to fathom, but no international relationship is more consequential to the world because how these two countries choose to cooperate and compete affects billions of lives. A core assumption of international diplomacy is that more conversations will result in mutual understanding and more positive, friendly feelings,” she said. “But what if those conversations, when they happen, result instead in retrenchment? What if they leave a bitter taste behind?”
Filming the doc was an ambitious undertaking. The director shared that she had to “fight to get access every single day of every single shoot. That includes, most memorably, going to Tibet via 25-hour train with less than two weeks to get a special Tibet permit and train tickets and staying on board the train when the Chinese propaganda department wanted to kick us off at 3am in the middle of nowhere so we wouldn’t film,” she recalled.
Check out the trailer below. You can catch “All Eyes and Ears” on VOD starting December 6.
