Born in China (2017)

Disney Nature has produced a string of enjoyable and inspiring documentaries aimed a families featuring animals from around the world. Born in China focuses mainly on 3 different species, pandas, snow leopards, and golden monkeys. Like the previous films in this series, Born in China does a fairly straight forward circle of life story following a set family of each species through infancy to adulthood.

As usual the film is stunningly beautiful. Disney Nature hires some of the best nature documentarians to handle their films so you get some amazing footage. Born in China ranks up there with the best in the series for sheer gorgeousness and the cute factor is high too. However what impressed me most is how far the film was willing to go with its circle of life motif.

Spoiler warning, not all the animals have a successful story arc or happy ending. There is tragedy and it's not avoided. As en educational piece that is an excellent choice. It's handled in a manner that is appropriate for the age of the target audience so the story will have impact without being disturbing. It would be easy for the film makers to just chose the happy stories but they chose to show us all sides of life in the wild.

Born in China
Starring: pandas, leopards, monkeys, John Krasinski
Writer/Director: Lu Chuan