Taiwan, like other countries around the world, is wondering what Donald Trump’s return to the White House augurs for U.S. foreign policy.
It’s not a matter of idle speculation for Taiwan. The willingness of the U.S. to defend the island nation’s independence from mainland China – which claims Taiwan as its own – could prove critical for its future.
Taiwan’s precarity in the long shadow cast by China comes into compelling focus in the Oscar-contending documentary Invisible Nation, directed by Vanessa Hope. The film screened as part of Deadline’s For the Love of Docs series, a virtual event designed to bring attention to a curated selection of worthy films.
Hope came to the project not only as a filmmaker, but also with expertise in the politics of the region, having served on the Council on Foreign Relations, the prestigious century-old nonpartisan think tank. She studied in China in the 1990s, then moved to Taiwan to continue her studies in the mid ‘90s, discovering first-hand the aggressive posture China has adopted toward its neighbor.
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“China was firing missiles at us on the island, and that very much struck me as a situation I had to better understand,” Hope explained during a Q&A after the screening. “The United States sent aircraft carrier teams into the Taiwan Strait area, north and south of the island, and I thought I really should better investigate what is going on with U.S. foreign policy, and it changed my life.”
Hope’s initial time in Taiwan in the ‘90s coincided with the country’s transition from autocracy to democracy. Freddy Lim, a Taiwanese rock star-turned-politician who appears in the documentary, remembers that era and the extraordinary transformation of his country into a beacon of government by the people.
“We really have been through a very unique journey from living under the authoritarian regime, controlling your lives everywhere with all the ways they can do,” Lim said, “to… maybe the most progressive nation in the Indo-Pacific region right now. We have been the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, and we’ve been considered as a country that can show the resilience of democracy nowadays.”
China takes a belligerent attitude toward any country that recognizes Taiwan’s sovereignty and has cowed many nations into acting as if the island were just an adjunct of the mainland. That explains the title of the film – Invisible Nation – suggesting a country at pains to remind the world that it exists and has a right to self-determination.
The film’s composer, Wei-San Hsu, who grew up in Taiwan and is now based in California, sees an “ambassadorial” function to Invisible Nation.
“It’s always like I want to explain everything about Taiwan, but there’s no time or I don’t know how to explain everything in a short conversation,” she said. “And that’s why we need a film. So, this film is really, to me, important for Taiwanese people and for the rest of the world to understand us.”
Remarkably, Hope was able to center her film around Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, the country’s first female leader, who left office earlier this year after serving two terms. Tsai granted the filmmaker unheard of access for the sitting head of a democratic nation. Hope initially made her pitch for access to people around the president.
“I think they liked the ‘women, peace, security’ focus. They liked the diplomatic focus and they liked the idea that I wanted to learn from Taiwan,” the director said. “What did Taiwan want to tell the world about its story? How could I translate that to an international community as an outsider and show why Taiwan matters and should be heard and can make a difference in the world?”
Only a few weeks ago, China staged “large-scale military drills in the waters and skies surrounding Taiwan,” as the New York Times wrote, meant to further intimidate Taiwan. It’s in that context that Invisible Nation makes an implicit plea for the country’s survival.
Hsu, the composer, explained how she tried to embody Taiwan in her closing music for the film.
“That piece of music is my love letter to Taiwan because I named it ‘Island of Freedom,’” she said. “Besides strings, you’ll hear three solo instruments which are violin, trumpet, and cello. … I was thinking about violins, how it can symbolize our resilience, and when I was thinking about trumpet, it reminds me: president, triumph, and sometimes military and war. And when I was thinking about cello, it’s like our love to our homeland. It’s like the warm sounds [of] the ocean, embracing the island, protecting us.”
Hsu continued, “I wanted these three instruments to create this score that sounds like Taiwanese history, how we struggle and we’ve been through colonization and we fought for democracy and we achieve something. And there’s always this moment like, ‘Oh, we achieve such good things,’ but there’s always the threat. So, there’s uncertainty, and until the very end you hear these violins struggle and struggle and finally break through the cadenza. … It’s like my wish for Taiwan because I hope one day we can break through all these outside limits and have our own choice and to be truly free.”
Watch the full conversation in the video above.
For the Love of Docs is a virtual Deadline event series presented by National Geographic. It continues with a new film screening each Tuesday through December 2. Next up: Hollywoodgate, the award-winning documentary about Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S. forces, directed by Ibrahim Nash’at.
