The animated documentary “Eternal Spring (長春)” by filmmaker Jason Loftus (“Ask No Questions”) is a multiple award winner at this year’s 2022 Hot Docs, winning Hot Docs Audience Award for best film and the Rogers Audience Award for best Canadian film.

In the documentary, a group of Chinese activists confronted with government denunciations and human rights violations against their spiritual practice, executes a bold and perilous plan to hack into state television.

The film will next screen at the New York Human Rights Film Festival on May 23 at Lincoln Center & May 24 at IFC Center, followed on May 31 and June 2 at Krakow Film Festival.

In March 2002, a state TV station in China was hijacked by members of outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong. Their goal was to counter the government narrative about their practice. In the aftermath, police raids sweep Changchun City, and comic book illustrator Daxiong (Justice League, Star Wars), a Falun Gong practitioner, is forced to flee.

He arrives in North America, blaming the hijacking for worsening a violent repression. But his views are challenged when he meets the lone surviving participant to have escaped China, now living in Seoul, South Korea. Combining present-day footage with 3D animation inspired by Daxiong’s art, Eternal Spring retraces the event on its 20th anniversary, and brings to life an unprecedented story of defiance, harrowing eyewitness accounts of persecution, and an exhilarating tale of determination to speak up for political and religious freedoms, no matter the cost.

Watch the first trailer for Eternal Spring (長春).