How to Have an American Baby

POV
  • Feature Film
  • 2023
  • 120 Mins

How to Have an American Baby is a kaleidoscopic voyage into the shadow economy catering to Chinese tourists who travel to the US to give birth for citizenship. Told through a series of intimately observed vignettes, the story of a hidden global economy emerges–depicting the fortunes and tragedies that befall the ordinary people caught in its web. A Co-Presentation with Chasing the Dream, a public media initiative from The WNET Group.

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Film Credits

  • Leslie Tai Director/Producer
  • Jillian Schultz Producer
  • Elivia Shaw Co-Producer
  • Leila Lin Co-Producer
  • Yan Cong Co-Producer

Critical Acclaim

Leslie Tai’s deeply embedded look at both the client and business-owner side of the transaction only grows more complicated as it continues, perhaps no more so than when portraying the United States as almost incidental to the purposes of its subjects… [The film] left one with a welter of feelings, and not always knowing what to think—which is a good thing.

Nicolas Rapold, Screen Slate

Press Room

‘POV’ and ‘America ReFramed’ host the 2024 Wyncote Fellows at PBS Annual Meeting POV’s While We Watched Receives a Peabody Awards Nomination America ReFramed Acquires the Compelling Documentary A Woman on the Outside to Open WORLD’s Newest Content Theme “Liberated Lives” Beginning March 28, 2024
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