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- Chinese filmmakers facing censorship are turning to what is often their last chance to reach a Chinese-speaking audience: Taiwan.
- They’re entering film festivals, hoping wins will secure a commercial release outside of the 10 coveted spots reserved for Chinese film releases in the island democracy.
- But that brings risks of threats and harassment from an increasingly restrictive China.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — When producer Wang Zijian was making the movie “Bel Ami,” or “Beautiful Friends,” he knew it had no chance of airing in Chinese theaters.
The black-and-white satire, set in a small, snowy Chinese town, details the intersecting lives of gay couples, a topic that faces strict censorship under China’s authoritarian leaders.
Wang thought it was unlikely to find welcome in Hong Kong either, as the Chinese Communist Party has been tightening control over the former British colony.
So like a growing number of Chinese filmmakers concerned about censorship, he turned to his last chance to reach a Chinese-speaking audience: Taiwan.
“For us, this is the only remaining market,” said Wang, a 36-year-old film producer living in Beijing.
Last year he submitted his movie to Taiwan’s most prestigious film festival, the Golden Horse Awards, in hopes that it would lead to a commercial release.
That decision carried its own risks. The Chinese censors have been increasing pressure on filmmakers, including those who try to circumvent the government by taking their work abroad. As restrictions increase over depictions of sensitive topics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, filmmakers who disregard requirements for official approval face threats of repercussions to their lives and work.
Chinese LGBTQ+ content creators have learned to navigate murky social media censorship and form queer communities online.
Chinese authorities are especially sensitive about Taiwan, an island democracy that China claims as its territory and has vowed to take by force one day if necessary.
In 2019, China began ordering its filmmakers not to enter the Golden Horse Awards festival after one winner expressed support for Taiwanese independence.
For its part, Taiwan limits the number of Chinese movies shown each year in theaters to 10 — selected at random from about 50 submissions. The restriction dates to the 1990s, when China and Taiwan slowly opened cultural exchanges.
Exceptions are made for films that win big awards at major film festivals. In November, Wang’s movie, which was filmed in China, won Golden Horse Awards for acting, cinematography and editing, but those accolades were considered too minor to qualify it for commercial release.
This month, Wang and others released a petition asking for Taiwan to relax the rules and grant more exemptions for award-winning films — including his “Bel Ami.”
It also argues that “Bel Ami” — which was funded and produced by a French company — should be considered an international film. But Taiwan considers it a Chinese film, because more than half the main cast is Chinese.
The movie schism reflects a split across the wider Chinese-language world, with the Chinese Communist Party using its economic weight and political power to claim cultural authority while Chinese people in the diaspora and on the borders and margins assert a different way of being.
Since 2017, when China started requiring feature films to obtain approval from authorities for screenings at home and overseas, increasing numbers of Chinese filmmakers have been teaming up with foreigners in attempts to skirt the new rules.
“Nobody knows whether a film will be OK,” said Sabrina Qiong Yu, a professor of film and Chinese studies at Newcastle University in England. “Those regulations are more there to encourage self-censorship than to actually censor you.”
The new restrictions also exacerbated a decline in independent film festivals in China, dampening opportunities for filmmakers outside the official system — and causing more to look abroad.
“Censorship has always been there,” Yu said. “But when it became more and more harsh, lots of filmmakers started to see Taiwan as one of the best places to showcase their work.”
A total of 276 films from China were submitted to the Taiwan festival last year — the most since 2018, the year before China began its boycott.
The award for best narrative film went to “An Unfinished Film,” a Chinese movie about a film crew caught in quarantine during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It also won for best director. Lou Ye was well aware of the punishments Chinese filmmakers could face if they defied the government, having been temporarily banned from working for broaching sensitive topics, such as LGBTQ+ communities and pro-democracy protests, and submitting his work to international festivals without authorization.
But the recent awards won him a commercial release in Taiwan. It is unclear whether Lou faced repercussions for last year’s winning submission. Through the movie’s distributor, he declined a request for an interview.
Wang said he and Geng Jun, the director of “Bel Ami,” have faced harassment by Chinese authorities for submitting their film to the Golden Horse Awards, but declined to give details.
“The authorities’ approach has always been to impose punishments in a way that leaves no trace,” he said. “As soon as they feel their rationality isn’t working, they resort to using their power to threaten you.”
A new censorship law could penalize anyone who screens unapproved films in Hong Kong with up to three years in jail.
The Taiwan festival has a reputation for recognizing Asian movies that face bans at home, including “Revolution of Our Times,” a 2021 Hong Kong documentary about the pro-democracy protests there and “The Story of Southern Islet,” a 2020 Malaysian film whose director refused to cut out scenes of traditional folklore and supernatural beliefs.
But Chinese films probably will face greater scrutiny as cross-strait tensions have deteriorated.
Wonder Weng, executive director of the Taiwan Film Critics Society, has long advocated abolishing the quota on Chinese films. However, the effort has gained little traction, in large part because Taiwanese society is less interested in movies from mainland China.
While film enthusiasts and professionals have promoted independent Chinese productions, Weng said, a subset of Taiwan vehemently opposes any Chinese content, which is sometimes viewed as Communist Party propaganda.
“Even though most people are aware that these regulations are unreasonable, they don’t pay much attention to the issue,” he said.
China is preparing for an escalation of the trade war with the U.S. once Donald Trump takes office.
In response to questions from The Times, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture said that it will continue to assess the necessity of the restrictions but that festival screenings, the lottery system and the awards exemptions ensure that Chinese films can be seen in Taiwan.
In any case, Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, offers much slimmer financial prospects than China, which has 1.4 billion people.
“Basically 99% of Chinese films released in Taiwan perform terribly at the box office,” said Sun Tseng-han, founder of Hooray Films, which worked on Taiwan distribution plans for “An Unfinished Film,” which has screened only at festivals so far. “But I really liked it myself, so I wanted to see if it had a chance here.”
Chinese consumers have become increasingly frugal. Experts say that’s bad news for the country’s economy.
As for Wang, the “Bel Ami” producer said he had considered submitting his work to the Taiwan festival in 2020 and 2021 but was too afraid that would provoke trouble with authorities.
This time, he felt he had less to lose.
He said that deepening censorship has ruined China’s film industry, turning the country into a place where “everyone makes what the government wants to see.”
Like many Chinese independent films, “Bel Ami” got no reviews on China’s heavily managed internet.
But on the night of the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, Wang heard from friends back home in China that Chinese social media had become a battleground between commenters celebrating the Chinese entries and the internet censors taking down their posts.
By 4 a.m., the censors had won.
But Wang was satisfied that his film had at least generated some discussion inside China.
Taiwan, he said, is the “last place of hope for Chinese-language cinema.”
