Unbroken – The Untold Story of Shen Yun is an investigative documentary by Sincere Pictures that goes behind the scenes of the classical Chinese dance company Shen Yun Performing Arts to challenge accusations of malpractice against it.
The New York Times ran several articles alleging that dancers were abused, intimidated, and mistreated by the company – but where did this information come from?
If you know little about Shen Yun, it is a New York-based company that tours globally and mounts large-scale marketing campaigns for its shows, which portray authentic pre-communist Chinese culture.
It is affiliated with the spiritual movement Falun Gong, rooted in Buddhist tradition. Faith-based and anti-communist, Shen Yun was never likely to find favour in China, where its ideas are persecuted.
Unbroken takes a close look at the company at both a performance and a political level. It speaks with dancers and their families, explores their motivations, ethos, and experiences, and examines the themes and beliefs promoted through Shen Yun’s shows.
It also explores the allegations that Shen Yun dancers are denied medical treatment for injuries, as well as other claims raised by The New York Times between 2024 and 2025, bringing forward dancers, administrators, and medical specialists to refute them.
This film offers the perspective that Shen Yun exists to increase awareness of the beauty of Chinese culture and that its dancers are not coerced or abused. The question of whether it funds the Falun Gong movement is left unaddressed, but that movement is international, not unique to this one dance company.
Dig deeper beyond the stories of “Shen Yun’s dark side,” and you find troubling evidence that spy networks and even the Chinese government may be involved in a planned strategy to discredit the company. Former dancers share a very different perspective from the one that portrays Shen Yun as seeking out young performers to exploit.
Emotive headlines in the newspaper include “an army of child laborers,” while the assumption persists that Falun Gong is a cult that practices coercive control on those who join. It is also known that this organisation is persecuted in China to the point that political prisoners may have been involved in forced organ harvesting. Shen Yun performers have received death threats, while their shows are sometimes criticised for propaganda and homophobia.
Sincere Pictures and director Fiona Young have certainly sided with Shen Yun throughout, asking why The New York Times was so set on this exposé, and why it would not engage in any discussion with the company. Unbroken asks troubling questions about how a foreign power could influence the news in a major paper read by most Americans.
I came away from this film still unsure what to believe. Shen Yun may be a PR front for Falun Gong and therefore in the line of fire from the Chinese Communist regime. The New York Times exposé may be entirely false and influenced by outside factors. Shen Yun’s association with the far-right Epoch Times is another facet of the story.
Unbroken shows commitment, spirituality, and resolve in the face of discrimination, pressure, and adversity. I think you need to make up your own mind as you watch: the dancing is a pleasure, the cultural motifs are interesting, but the story’s truth is far more complicated than it appears, whether you are in the USA, China, or watching internationally.
Unbroken – The Untold Story of Shen Yun will be released on all major streaming platforms on 12 Jun and is now available in fourteen languages: Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese, significantly expanding accessibility to international audiences.