Toronto Film Festival Dailies

TERRORIZERS

TIFF 2021

IN CONVERSATION with Director: Wi Ding Ho

By Emmanuel Itier

Q: What was the inspiration for this film and what were your intentions making it?

Wi: I’m a filmmaker and I like telling engaging stories. So many movies are so linear today. But when you read a book there is a notion of going back and forth. I wanted to try to do something not linear, not predictable, not necessarily structured with a 3 acts construction and an obvious protagonist. I wanted to try to do something different with this film. It’s fun to engage the audience in a different experience. As long as they are not confused by it. It’s like listening to a news that is happening and revealing itself little by little, in time, with different witnesses. I want to make people think and not just be entertained.

Q: How difficult was it to put together this film?

Wi: We didn’t do a hundred draft but just two or three. I packaged the movie with 6 lead actors. They all are pretty well known in Taiwan. I was lucky to have an investor who trusted me because of the success of my previous movie as well as because of the actors I had attached to this project. We also got government funding which was very helpful because it re-insure investors. Everyone trusted me enough and I was able to put this film together. We just did couple of more rewrite before the filming of this picture. Also, we had to cut down the budget so we did a polish. Finally when we edited the movie it was 3 hours  and a half long so I had, again, to rewrite and restructure the movie to make it tighter. The final movie is a little bit different from the original script.

Q: What is this movie talking about, truly, for you?

Wi: The loneliness of people in a city. Mainly because people spend all their free time on the internet. They have two parallel lives: one in the real world when they work and one on the virtual world when they spend so much time on the net. It’s very bad in Asia. People are so addicted to games and the virtual world of the internet. There isn’t enough education to figure out what to do with your life. Now young people are getting totally lost in the world of the internet, it’s quite sad.

Q: What are your expectations to be at TIFF, in Toronto?

Wi: Sadly, I won’t be in Toronto for real because of the pandemic. But I hope people like my movie. Here, it’s released pretty soon in theatre, which is great as I make movies to be seen on the big screen. I hope we get into two or three more festivals and then I hope foreign distributors will buy it for their countries. I really hope people love my film. I worked so hard and I put so much passion into it.