Film Screening | Gaga《哈勇家》

2025 ANU TAIWAN UPDATE

Gaga《哈勇家》(2022)
Directed by Laha Mebow
112 mins, Mandarin/Atayal/Taiwanese, English subtitles

Among the Atayal indigenous people of Taiwan, gaga is the traditional law and custom, the way of living with the land and organising society, the source of values.  When Hayung, the patriarch of an Atayal family, and the senior knowledge-keeper, dies, his oldest son Payang decides to run for election as head of the local district. The film Gaga follows this election, in its raw democratic, and occasionally corrupt, form and the ways – sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious – that it affects the extended family. A groundbreaking film, Gaga is mostly in Atayal language and presents the life and social interactions of these contemporary indigenous Taiwanese people unsentimentally, with humour, with compassion, and with the sharp eye of a brilliant film-maker.

Gaga won Best Director and Best Supporting Actress at the 59th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival in 2022. Beyond Taiwan, it won the Best Director at the 2022 Singapore International Film Festival - Asian Feature Competition and has been screened at film festivals in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Auckland and New York.

Q&A with Film Director Laha Mebow

We are delighted that Film Director Laha Mebow, Taiwan's first Indigenous female director, will be attending the screening and take part in Q&A afterwards. Dr Ying Xin Show (ANU Malaysia Institute) will facilitate the discussion.

Laha Mebow is the first female director from Taiwan to win Best Director at the Golden Horse Awards. An Indigenous filmmaker of the Tayal people, she is also the first Indigenous woman in Taiwan to direct a narrative feature. Her films explore spiritual inheritance, family trauma, and Indigenous identity through a deeply personal yet cinematic lens. 

Ying Xin Show is Senior Lecturer at the School of Culture, History and Language, and Deputy Director of the ANU Malaysia Institute in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University. Her work explores the history and culture of migration, decolonisation, and the impact of the Cold War on Asian societies through literature and the arts.

View the 2025 Taiwan Update Program

Photo supplied by Swallow Wings Film.