2020 Nominees

Undercover: Inside China's Digital Gulag

Hardcash Productions, ITV

UK

Documentary & Factual - Social & Current Affairs

The film reveals evidence of a highly state secretive mass surveillance project, presenting a new form of governance that is controlling citizens and being exported around the world, challenging liberal democracy, during a period when authoritarianism is increasing. Once fully tested and advanced, this system of governance will enable authoritarian regimes worldwide to control their citizens to a terrifying degree. This technology could also threaten our freedom in the West. So far, no journalist has been able to work freely in China’s secretive Xinjiang. We send an undercover filmmaker named “Li” to reveal a digital gulag – that could threaten human freedom everywhere. Uyghurs are under constant surveillance. Li, however, is Han Chinese, whom the authorities encourage to emigrate to the region. For the first time a Chinese Communist Party official admits that Uyghurs "have no human rights" in Xinjiang. Li films Uyghurs describing missing their families and their on-going repression.