Hong Kong movie director Derek Yee will make a movie about the plight of 3,000 Chinese orphans who were sent to Inner Mongolia to escape the devastating famine of 1959 to 1961, he announced on Saturday.

The announcement came only a few days after Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned the incident during the annual parliamentary session, leading commentators to question whether Yee was volunteering for a propaganda film to get into the central government’s good graces.

“This story moved me deeply,” Yee said of the childrens’ plight. “It is a story about love, and about resilient and open-hearted people conquering adversity.” Filming will begin in Inner Mongolia in April, he added.

Researchers estimate that around 20 to 30 million people died in the Great Chinese Famine, which took place from 1959 to 1961 and is often attributed to the radical reform policies of Mao Zedong. The Mao government sent orphans from southern provinces to Inner Mongolia largely because more food and resources were available there.

Xi mentioned the incident last week during a parliamentary session with representatives from Inner Mongolia, calling it an example of “the fraternal love within the family of the Chinese race.”

“During the difficult period of a natural disaster, the herders of Inner Mongolia gave their love and sense of responsibility to raise these ‘children of the nation’,” Xi said.

Veteran commentator Johnny Lau said films about Chinese history sometimes whitewash the past, but sometimes use historical incidents as metaphors to comment on current events.

Lau told Apple Daily that Xi’s speech mentioned the “mutual love and care” between different ethnicities, but omitted the wider social and historical context of why the orphans were sent to Inner Mongolia.

The Chinese Communist Party is approaching its centenary celebration, and Xi is not likely to allow cultural productions to bring up past mistakes, Lau added. The regime is also trying to keep ethnic tensions in check in Inner Mongolia and to curb any separatist sentiments.

In 2016 Yee supported the voting process that gave the best-picture prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards to the independent Hong Kong film “Ten Years”, against strong pressure from pro-Beijing figures in the film industry. So it remains to be seen what kind of movie Yee will make about the orphans, Lau said.

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