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Aug. 21, 2025 - Epoch Times
23:27
The Movie Beijing Doesn’t Want You to See | Yan Ma
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My producer, Tofia, they tried to recruit her to be a spy before she leaves the country.
Yan Ma is the director of the new feature film, The Unrestricted War, a thriller inspired by the events surrounding the outbreak of COVID-19.
What they did after that turned a crisis, a public health crisis, to a global disaster.
In this episode, he reveals some of the incredible challenges they face to make this film.
Sometimes we shot up on the set and the owner suddenly gets scared.
So, oh, this is going to put me in danger.
Three days before filming, you auditioned a new lead for the film.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's called crazy it was, yes.
His own family members in China were threatened by the Chinese communist regime.
They cut some of my family members' income.
They cut their paycheck.
Like a convenience store next to my house, and I mean, the back of the store actually turned into a secret Chinese police station.
That's ironic to me.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellek.
Yan Ma, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you for having me.
You've made a really, really excellent film, but there were some moments where you were wondering to yourself that maybe this film won't be made at all.
And I want to get you to tell me about them.
I'm talking about the ones that are not typical to most movies.
As a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker, we kind of knew this from the very beginning of the production.
There will be many challenges and even real life risks because many of our team members are from China, including myself.
So my family members faced a lot of pressure from the local government, the Chinese government.
Okay, wait a sec.
Explain this to me.
At what point did they experience pressure?
After I started the project, they were called to a government office.
And then when they get there, they realize they actually was led to what they call the national security office.
So they have the officers in there tell them that everything have consequences.
So basically, they issued a threat to them.
And then later, they cut some of my family members' income.
They cut their paycheck.
So that's like at the beginning of the project.
So it's almost two years.
It's still...
So how did they know that you were making this film just at the beginning of the project?
We don't have concrete evidence, but we know they have informants everywhere, right?
Whatever we do, they are closely watching.
So they will know right away.
It's surprising.
Many instances I experienced before, like we decided to do something.
And right away, next week, someone from my team just got a notice from the national security.
And they know right away.
We don't even know how they learned that because a lot of those discussions happen with a closed door.
It's a closed story discussion.
So yeah, but we did experience many of this kind of situation.
Explain to me the genesis of this film, right?
You know, this film is inspired by the pandemic, right?
So I just feel like it's important to reflect on what happened, Really, what really happened, especially at the beginning of the outbreak.
So I think that we need to see how that's why in the film, I mainly show how the antagonists use their power to manipulate people and censor information, basically weaponize the crisis and eventually lead it to a global pandemic.
So I just feel like it's very important to shine a light on this because this may happen again.
And next time, if we have something much more deadly than COVID, I would say we may not have a second chance.
So I feel like, yeah, it's important for us to talk about it.
There are so many brilliant filmmakers in China, but they just simply don't have the freedom to do this kind of film.
So for me, as a filmmaker, living in Canada, I just feel, yeah, I guess I just have to do it.
I understand that just a few days before you actually started production, before you started filming, you lost the protagonist, the main character in the film.
So just tell me about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was a very tough situation.
Three days before the shoot, our lead actors, LD actors, they received a lot of pressure too from their family and friends.
The lead actor got really worried because he really believed that he will get harmed by the Chinese government.
And one day, in the middle of the night, he got a phone call and there's nobody speaking on the other end.
And it's just really scared him.
And yeah, the next day he just told us that I have to leave.
I have to go back.
I have to go home.
Yeah, this kind of thing is like, it never happened in the film industry because the wardrobe are prepared for him.
And it just created, it puts us in a very difficult spot.
And so we had to find a new actor and basically start over three days before.
So this is kind of like a challenge we are facing during the production.
It happens a lot, right?
This kind of thing.
So yeah, it's real.
I mean, this fear, this effect of CCP, like in the Western world, they're real.
We felt it throughout the whole production.
It's not something like we feel so far away.
It's not far away.
Sometimes we shot up on a set and the owner suddenly gets scared.
It's like, oh, this is, I think it's going to put me in danger and I'm not going to rent you this set anymore.
This kind of situation we run into all the time.
I mean, this is really astonishing.
I mean, even, you know, you're talking to someone who's quite aware of the Chinese communist regime's influence activities in America.
We cover this on the show quite often.
But what you're describing just as a practical reality, right, is astonishing.
And again, I mean, I think clearly your film is called The Unrestricted War.
What happened to you is, you know, in the name of the film, in the production, there's a kind of an interesting, I think the young people these days call that meta.
It's kind of unbelievable in a way.
Ironically, I have, you know, there last year, or two years ago, they have this PlayStation, overseas PlayStation from the Chinese government established in North America.
I actually got one of this right in my neighborhood, like one minute walk from my house.
Because I was watching on the map, like you know, from the news, they showed where all the stations, the police station are.
And I say, oh, one of them is actually right in front of my house.
It's in the convenience store, in the back of the convenience store.
Just remind me about what these CCP overseas police stations are.
What is that actually?
It's basically like CCP, they send out this news to all the Chinese people outside the country.
They said they are establishing this police station overseas so all the Chinese citizens can go there and basically provide information.
If they see anyone doing anything that will harm China or doing anything that make the government look bad, you can just go to this police station and report them.
They have overseas operators will help.
I don't know exactly how they will help, but this is how far they reached in the Chinese community.
Again, sort of, you know, we hear about the Chinese police stations and so forth, but you don't, you know, it doesn't hit home.
It hits home a lot more when it's one minute away from your home and you're making a film that's critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
Yes.
Right.
It feels unreal because it's like the convenience store next to my house and I mean the back of the store actually turned into a Chinese police station, a secret Chinese police station.
That's ironic to me.
As you told me earlier, your relatives have been threatened.
They've had their pay cut because of your work.
What do you think they're trying to accomplish with that?
Well, obviously they wanted to put pressure on me.
Just stop whatever I'm doing.
But to me, I think the best way to react to this is do even more.
Because you can back down.
Once you back down, they know they have you in their pocket.
They know that this works.
It will just go worse.
Jan, we're going to take a quick break right now.
And folks, we're going to be right back.
And we're back with the director of The Unrestricted War, Yan Ma.
If this film becomes big, and I think it really has the potential to, you've made a really powerful film here.
Aren't you worried that it might have greater repercussions on your family back home?
Yes, all the time.
It really is like, especially to me, as Chinese, this kind of thing really can impact us a lot.
But I don't think I can walk away.
My conscience won't allow me to do that, firstly.
And then secondly, if I stop because of this, then they know, oh, this works for him.
They won't stop.
They will just do more.
I experienced many of these kind of cases from my friends.
They all experienced this before.
There was a first time, always a second time.
They will go to your family again, but this time they will say, okay, we need you to do this for us.
Otherwise, your family is going to be in trouble again.
So they slowly turn you to work for them.
This is how for someone that doesn't have the bottom line, they can, yeah.
This is how they manipulate people.
Again, as Chinese, like someone who grew up there, I knew all their tricks very well.
Yeah, and I mean, again, this is, of course, shown in various ways, you know, with the Canadian family, right?
I mean, I'm not going to give away some of the plot twists, but let's talk about unrestricted war.
Okay, of course, in this instance, I think the unrestricted war is using the virus as a weapon, in effect, right?
Again, whatever the origin was to basically, you know, affect the West in a very negative way, right?
And, you know, which is actually what happened in reality.
I mean, the whole, you know, the whole economy was closed down ultimately, right?
And certainly that decision on the CCB side played a role in that, whatever the total decision-making was.
Tell me a little bit more about other realms of this unrestricted war.
Notice, to be honest, I just feel it's everywhere because we are so closely connected to China in so many ways.
I'll give you a fun example.
Like all the international students, right?
I came to Canada as an international student.
And my producer, too, Sophia, she was sent to Canada as a student study, right?
And she actually was recruited.
They tried to recruit her to be a spy before she leaves the country.
That really happens to her.
And she said, of course, she said no, she refused.
But even for all the normal students that you decided to go to a different country and then you were approached by a Chinese spy agency for this kind of task.
I'm just giving you an example like this to show that to them, it's really, there's no boundaries.
They do anything necessary to get what they want.
Like right now we have so many Chinese internet influencers, even platforms, and filled with their ideology and propaganda even.
It's really everywhere, including the fentanyl, what happened on the street.
And the so-called collaboration with the Western companies allow them to do all kinds of commercial espionage.
And even many influence are made on the foreign politicians.
So this, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Well, in Canada, there's pretty strong evidence that a number of elected parliament members were elected in significant part with CCP money.
Yeah, I heard that on the news.
So what has been the response of the film?
You've screened it now in a number of places.
I just watched it when you screened it in Congress here in Washington, D.C. What has been the reaction of the audiences?
The reaction from the audience is actually incredibly good.
I'm very happy about it.
I think the audience really get the message behind the film.
And we tried a few festivals, but we get a response that they are a little concerned about their topic because some of the very big festivals, usually they are very connected to China.
A lot of filmmakers, Chinese filmmakers, came every year.
So they're concerned that, because this happened to them before, if they accept our film, the Chinese government will ask the rest of the Chinese filmmakers to leave the festival.
So they will suffer a loss.
So we experienced this in Taiwan Film Festival before the Golden Horse.
They said the same thing.
If we accept you, that means we lose all other Chinese film.
Because the government will just force them to withdraw.
You know, it's very interesting.
It reminds me, there's a really powerful book called The Collaboration.
It was written about how Hollywood worked with the Nazi regime in the 1930s to make sure, I believe in the middle of the 1930s, there was not a single film made critical of Nazi Germany, even though these extreme anti-Semitic policies were already kind of being put in place.
Not just anti-Semitic, there were all sorts of red flags, but Hollywood basically didn't notice, even though there were filmmakers who wanted to make those films.
We also know that.
There's an eerie parallel here.
That's just happens for normal for culture market sometimes.
Even including the Holocaust, in the beginning, when the Nazi regime is still there, before they were defeated, it's like no one believed it.
Same thing, it reminds me about the organ harvesting, too.
I don't know if you're probably familiar with the topic.
When we first heard about it, it was just like, that was 2003, 2004, very early.
But yeah, not all of this gradually, I mean, the culture products are picking that up.
I hope that will make a difference because it is important, because this is what opened people's mind.
So they want to do something about it, right?
Some news is too shocking.
It's just maybe, yeah, the general public will react to it very slowly.
That's why, I mean, like, it's actually a great responsibility for all the filmmakers and writers to focus on issues like this.
Because it can shape opinion for the public, right?
So they can start thinking about this.
And here's the thing, right?
I mean, in the 30s, it wasn't really clear that there would be this mass killing of Jews that happened during World War II.
It was clear there were these extreme anti-Semitic policies and the language of genocide language and things like that.
And so you're talking about this kind of denying how easy it is for us to die.
Part of it is human nature, I think.
Part of it is we don't want to know about some of the darkest things.
We don't want to believe that they're happening.
I've encountered that.
I've discussed this again on this program in the past.
And on the other hand, there's also this aspect where you have to make a sacrifice.
You have to make a personal sacrifice, financial or otherwise, prestige maybe, in order to publicly accept that a government is doing something terrible and say yes, right?
So I guess my question is, why have you chosen to make this sacrifice?
I guess I just, I feel the responsibility.
Like, because most of the Chinese makers, there's so many brilliant filmmakers, Chinese filmmakers, they don't have the freedom to do it.
And I'm here, at least I can say something.
And for the Western filmmakers, for most of them, it's also very difficult for them to do research and access information, find information behind the subjects.
It is almost impossible.
So for me, I guess I feel I have to do it.
I'm still lucky, because I'm in here.
At least I'm safe.
Thinking about other people that like the whistleblowers for the pandemic, right?
And think about the human rights lawyers in China and all the Fangung practitioners in China.
They paid a much higher price for speaking the truth or just have a different voice.
It's tough, but sometimes you have to do the right thing, I guess.
Just like the whistleblower in the film.
If you don't do it, it's going to be always like this.
There's something really beautiful about what you just said.
So where can people watch the film?
It will be released on Ganjing World Plus.
We will release the film on all the major platforms, including Apple TV and Amazon Prime and YouTube movies.
So yeah, we can find the film on all the VOD platforms.
Well, Jan, this film is profound, incredible.
I'm going to encourage everybody that's watching to watch it.
We're going to finish up now, but I'm going to roll the trailer right after we finish.
So I encourage our audience to stay and check out the trailer at the end.
And congratulations on an absolutely incredible film.
It's been such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you so much.
Wipe her from her database and burn the body.
Keep this contained, or you will join her in the furnace.
How'd you even get these numbers?
That's a state secret.
I'll be charged with espionage.
Then you better consider a way not to get caught.
We will lose everything of value here in China.
They both exhibit high-temperature, severe headaches, and I'm the most concerned that it might be quite contagious.
Why waste the good pandemic, right, General?
You have a serious viral outbreak that can threaten the whole world.
You mean fake news.
I'll never be able to come back to China.
Right now, our safety is what matters most, nothing else.
You saw the chaos in the hospital, right?
If the party has a plan, it needs to be better.
You think you know better than the party leaders?
I need to be with my family.
They will remain there to complete your mission.
I will not commit a crime against humanity.
The war never ended for us.
So to double-cross me, Dr. Karan, is something I cannot allow.
Thank you all for joining Yan Ma and Mi on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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