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The Trail from Xinjiang

Musa and his friends, all men, all young, all from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on China's northwestern border, now wander great cities in the East talking, shooting up, remembering home and practicing the one true skill they have: they steal.
Since China's market transition in the 1990s, child trafficking has become rampant in Xinjiang. Thousands, like Musa, spent their childhoods drifting from city to city with the pickpocket gangs. As the discriminative phrase, "Xinjiang thieves," has become nationally known over the past decade, Musa and the young men find lives frittered away in their struggle to establish an identity in a society caged by the pleasures and pains of transformative economic development.

Winner: Best Documentary Short at Asian American International Film Festival, New York, Best Television and Video Amateur Production at Urban TV Festival, Madrid, Sidney Gross Award for Best Investigative Reporting, New York University, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Beijing Independent Film Festival, Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, Phoenix Documentary Award, Screened at over 30 universities and venues, including University of Pennsylvania, University of Notre Dame, Xi’an Art Museum, Shanghai Modern Art Museum, Untitled Dialogue Artist Series etc.