2024 ANU TAIWAN UPDATE

And Miles To Go Before I Sleep 《九槍》(2022)
Directed by Tsung-lung Tsai
90 mins, Mandarin/Vietnamese

Like many of the 700,000 migrant workers in Taiwan, Vietnamese man Nguyen Quoc Phi was condemned as a “runaway foreign worker” in an ugly and complex migrant labour system. With expertise in construction work, he was one of the leaders of a group of migrants who worked in Hsinchu. He dreamed of saving up enough money to start a business back in his home country.

On 31 August 2017, though, Nguyen was reported for stealing a vehicle and ended up being shot nine times by police officer Chen Chung-wen. Nguyen bled to death on the way to hospital. Why did Chen use his firearm against a migrant worker? Did Nguyen have a record of drug use? Were the nine shots the only cause of Nguyen’s death? Where does justice lie when the perpetrator isn’t necessarily the true perpetrator, and an imperfect victim gets the blame?

And Miles to Go Before I Sleep won Best Documentary Feature at the 59th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, 2022. It was also nominated for Best Director and Best Documentary at the 2023 Taipei Film Festival. Beyond Taiwan, it has been screened at film festivals in Macao, Paris, Busan, Hong Kong, and Yogyakarta.

Tsung-lung Tsai (蔡崇隆) is a journalist and independent documentary filmmaker. He has produced more than 10 projects since 2000, focusing on human rights, environmentalism, the development of multiculturalism, and other social issues. Director Tsai is also currently an Associate Professor in Communications at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan.

Q&A with Film Director Tsung-lung Tsai

We are delighted that Film Director Tsung-lung Tsai will be attending the screening and take part in Q&A afterwards. Dr Hayeon Lee (ANU Korea Institute) will facilitate the discussion.

Hayeon Lee is an anthropologist of Korea and Vietnam interested in feminist ethnography, gender, transnational migration, care, and selfhood. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the ANU Korea Institute, College of Asia and the Pacific. She is currently working on a book manuscript, which examines marriage migrant women’s stories and migration trajectories between Vietnam and South Korea. Before joining the Korea Institute, she was a postdoctoral research scholar in modern Vietnamese studies at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

View the 2024 ANU Taiwan Update Program.

The ANU Taiwan Update is an initiative under the ANU Taiwan Studies Program 2022-25, which a partnership between the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University and the Ministry of Education, Republic of China (Taiwan).

Photo courtesy of And Miles to go Before I Sleep