A Taiwanese documentary on women migrant workers has been withdrawn from a movie festival in Hong Kong after its producers refused an order from censors to remove a scene depicting a street protest, the filmmaker has said.
Hong Kong has stepped up film censorship since China imposed a sweeping national security law on the city two years ago to quash political dissent after huge, sometimes violent democracy protests in 2019.
“The Lucky Woman”, directed by Tseng Wen-chen, was set to be screened Sunday at the ifva All About Us independent film festival, which is being organised by the Hong Kong Arts Centre with a focus on migrants in Asia.
But the director on Monday said event organisers had been told by Hong Kong’s Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration to remove a section about a protest in front of Taiwan’s presidential building before showing the film.
“So we decided to cancel the screening,” Tseng wrote on the movie’s social media page.
The documentary follows two Vietnamese women who travel to Taiwan for work but flee their contracted employers for life as undocumented migrants.
The film’s withdrawal came days after an outdoor screening of Batman film “The Dark Knight” in Hong Kong was scrapped after censors decided “the level of violence was not appropriate”.
Relations between Hong Kong and Taiwan have worsened in the past few years since Taiwan’s government openly supported the city’s protests of 2019, and as Beijing has stepped up diplomatic pressure on the self-ruled island.
