Leon Li’s Unsilenced exposes the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal 1999 crackdown on Falun Gong, a 70–100 million-member meditation practice banned after outgrowing the CCP’s influence. The film details abductions, torture, forced organ harvesting, and Hollywood’s self-censorship to access China’s $10B+ market, which eclipsed U.S. box office in 2021. Premiering in Vancouver on February 25, 2024, Li warns of the CCP’s cultural infiltration as an existential threat, urging support for independent films to counter state propaganda and reveal its global reach. [Automatically generated summary]
Oh, hey, Rebels, it's me, Sheila Gunread, and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
However, this is the internet, and the beauty of that is that you can listen or watch whenever you feel like.
Now, tonight, my guest is a new face to Rebel News viewers, I think.
His name is Leon Li, and he's a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker.
He's joining me today to talk about his new movie, Unsilenced.
It's about the plight and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China post the 1999 ban on the spiritual practice.
And it also delves into just how China manipulates the narrative around Falun Gong so that we in the Western world never really hear what's happening to the practitioners of Falun Gong.
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The atrocities committed against the Uyghurs were perfected by China against Falun Gong.
Today, you'll meet one Chinese-Canadian filmmaker who fought through intimidation and censorship to tell their stories.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Did you tune in to any of the Olympics from China?
I didn't because they're genocide Olympics and it was a moral choice not to give China the propaganda win they needed as they commit large-scale human rights atrocities against religious and ethnic minorities right under our noses.
Abduction, imprisonment, rape, torture, and forced organ harvesting.
It's all happening right now in China against Falun Gong.
And China has had an organized propaganda, disinformation, and intimidation campaign to prevent the stories of Falun Gong persecution from making their way into the Western world's media.
Today you're going to meet Leon Li.
He's a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker whose new movie, Unsilenced, tells the story of a university student in Beijing who chose to speak the truth about what was happening to Falun Gong practitioners like himself in China in the wake of CCP outlawing the religious practice in 1999.
Here's Leon in an interview we recorded Sunday morning.
Joining me now is director Leon Lee.
He's the director of the new movie Unsilenced.
He's joining me from Vancouver where last night, so Saturday night, he premiered his movie there.
Leon, before we get into the movie itself, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself because you're quite a prolific filmmaker with a focus on human rights.
Yes, I grew up in China.
I came to Canada in 2006 and that's when I started my filmmaking career.
Started with a documentary called Human Harvest about illegal organ trade in China.
And moving forward, focusing on human rights issues in China.
And Unsilenced is my latest film.
So why don't you tell us a little bit about this film and in particular why you felt it needed to be made?
I know there's some strong overlaps between Unsilenced and Human Harvest based on the targets of the organ harvesting, but why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
Unsilenced is based on real life events when the Chinese communist regime launched a brutal crackdown against 100 million citizens, a team of innocent students, and a Western reporter joined forces to counter the government's propaganda and fight for freedom.
The film, we had a successful theatrical run in the U.S. last month, and we opened on February 25th in Canada.
So again, it's about human rights issues in China.
And I feel it's a very timely film because not only it shed light on human rights atrocities in China, but also it speaks to the theme of truth versus lies.
What should people do when there is government censorship?
It's a very relevant thing for our time.
Now, your movie focuses on the treatment of the Falun Gong in China, and in particular, China making it illegal in the late 1990s and those who stood up for the ability to practice their religion, to believe what they want to believe, and to think what they want to think without government overreach.
And I think the timeline is very important because it really demonstrates the bravery of those activists whose stories you tell in your movie, because it was just 10 years after Tiananmen Square.
Exactly.
The story happened, well, it began in 1999 when Wang, who was a PhD candidate at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing.
And he was actually a student leader and tapped by the Communist Party to join their ranks in the future.
So he really had a bright future.
He was a practitioner of Falun Gong, but almost overnight, after the government banned Falun Gong, he had a difficult choice to make.
Would he abandon his faith, hopefully to keep his career, or would he stand up and speak the truth?
He chose the latter and faced severe consequences, but he forged on and devised creative ways to counter the government's propaganda.
I don't want to give too much away because I think everybody should see the movie, but your student activist protagonist in the story sort of joins forces with an American journalist.
And, you know, in the movie, you sort of go through the ways that the CCP puts pressure on Western journalists to self-silence themselves, to self-censor through fear of intimidation.
Yes, there have been many reports about CCB's tactics to interfere and silence foreign correspondents in China, including denying their visas, sending people to monitor them, intimidating the interviewees.
Essentially, it's very challenging for foreign reporters to report truthfully in China.
And even if they want to do so, most of them knew where the line is.
Sometimes even among the human rights atrocities, reporters know which one are easier to cover, which ones are the absolute no-no's.
So I interviewed many reporters who stationed in China, and I had to say many of them really wanted to do a great job, but it's not easy.
Now, getting back to Falun Gong practitioners, why did the CCP come down so hard on the Falun Gong?
Why was it something that the Chinese state felt they needed to outlaw?
What was the threat, I guess, is my question to the Chinese state?
That's a great question.
Falun Gong was introduced in 1992 to the public.
It's a Buddhist-based meditation practice that has the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
It was welcomed by the government in China and actually even supported for a long time.
I think the Chinese leadership once commented that there's enormous health benefits from the practice, that the country saves billions of yuan every year.
But a few things happened.
One, they realized by 1999, there were over 70 million to 100 million people practicing Falun Gong in China, which outnumbered the membership of the Chinese Communist Party.
Although Falun Gong has no political agenda whatsoever, but being a communist dictator, Jiang Zeming was just so paranoid that he wanted to take action.
And another important factor is that Falun Gong believes in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, whereas the communist regime is an atheist regime that functions based on propaganda and violence.
If a large percentage of the population actually believe in truth, actually believe in speaking the truth, it is no doubt a threat to the communist regime.
You know, and I think it's for that same reason that there's such a tough crackdown on Christianity within China.
And as you point out, the crackdown that we're seeing on Christians, that we are seeing on Uyghurs, all of this was perfected on Falun Gong.
Exactly.
Almost all religious practices and spiritual groups have been targeted in China since 1949, because the communist leaders don't want anyone or anything above them, whether it's the Lord, the Buddha, or Allah, or whoever.
They want to be the one that has the moral authority to say anything.
And take the practice of organ harvesting, for example.
It was widespread in Falun Gong, and then the Uyghurs also became a terrible, terrible target for the CCP.
And that's why when people raise awareness about persecution against particular group, they're really trying to help everybody because no one is immune to the crackdown.
Challenges in Portraying China00:08:19
Now, I know that you faced some pretty severe challenges trying to get this movie made.
You had to make it in Taiwan, but the threat of intimidation from the Chinese state reached right into Taiwan to disrupt production.
Almost every Chinese-speaking actors understandably want to develop their career in China one day.
So we had tremendous difficulty casting, in casting.
Many actors didn't even come to an audition.
And for those courageous ones who initially accepted our offer, some of them back off.
We had crew members really wanting to remain anonymous.
So if you look at the end credit, you see the number of people who remain anonymous.
Locations, quite often, when our team is on set doing set dressing, the owner would come out and say, oh, you can't shoot your film here.
But we say, well, but the film is scheduled the next day.
I say, I don't care, just you can't shoot here.
So after long days of production, we had to scramble and look for another location.
So within two months of production, the core team only had one day off.
Now, and even for yourself, are you facing any sort of intimidation as a Chinese Canadian filmmaker making movies that are critical of the Chinese state?
Is that sort of intimidation reaching into Canada as well?
I had my fair share of encounter with the Chinese authorities, in particular the Ministry of State Security, let's say the Chinese KGB.
They threatened me.
But here's the thing.
I think two things happened.
One is they realized that leaving me alone as an independent producer, there's only so much damage I can do.
Anything they try to do to interfere will only attract more attention to the films, which they don't want to see.
And secondly, I am deeply inspired by the people I portray in my films.
If they can do what they did in China, there is no reason I cannot tell their story in Canada.
Now, I wanted to ask you a question about Hollywood, because Hollywood seems to be very compliant, I guess, with China's demands.
We saw, you know, in the end credits of Mulan, you know, sort of thanking the Chinese government for allowing them to shoot in the Uyghur province.
And we've seen Hollywood stars like John Cena basically groveling for access to the Chinese market.
Is that why there really are no movies out there, a major Hollywood productions, that are critical of China?
Is it to get into the Chinese market, I guess, is my question.
Yes.
In 2021, the Chinese box office has officially surpassed the US to become the number one in the world.
And I believe it started in 1997 when there were several Hollywood films that were, let's say, not friendly to the Chinese regime.
And then people learned the lesson in order to be considered to be imported into the Chinese market because they had a strict quota system of foreign films that were allowed to be shown in China.
And people are really trying hard.
In the beginning, it was to make sure we don't criticize China.
And then people had to compete to portray the Chinese regime in a more positive light.
For example, in certain films, it has to be the Chinese spaceship, the Chinese agencies that save humanity, right?
And then it went even one step further.
They had to allow Chinese investment in those films so that, of course, in that case, they couldn't even, they sometimes have to have alternate stories, even additional scenes for the version to be shown in China.
That's why it's extremely rare for Hollywood to come, you know, to produce something that shed light on human rights atrocities in China.
So what is the solution?
You know, when Hollywood is either self-censoring or groveling and allowing Chinese propaganda to be inserted into their films, and with China intimidating Western journalists who are trying to tell their story, also arresting and cracking down on human rights activists, what is the solution to getting the word out, telling the world about what is happening in China?
We just sat through the genocide Olympics, where the world did their best to ignore what was happening around the Olympics at the very same time.
So how, I guess, how do we get through all of that to tell the story?
You are, but on a broader scale.
Well, for me, I think it's very important to keep telling stories like this.
We've got overwhelming response from the US and Canada now.
People are telling us how moved they were by Wang and his story in Unsilenced, and they felt compelled to take action to share with their family and friends.
Ultimately, awareness among the public is the most important thing.
If enough people know what's really going on in China, I think they will demand action from our politicians.
And the second point is that for a long time, the West naively believed that appeasement, dialogue, engagement, somehow by trading with China, it's going to change the mind of the dictators there.
Now, after decades of such a policy, I think we realize it doesn't work.
It's critical that the West realizes that the Communist Party in China is the most dangerous threat that the West faces and devise policies accordingly.
Otherwise, unfortunately, what happens to Ukraine will happen in Europe and will happen in Taiwan and will happen all over the world.
You know, it's true.
I think Western leaders for a long time thought that they could teach China about capitalism by trading with them.
And instead, China taught us all about the dangers of communism and how quickly it can proliferate and how those tentacles of the Chinese state reach into every aspect of our culture, particularly in pop culture, where we don't even realize that we're watching Chinese propaganda.
Absolutely.
The CCP had a long-term plan for the West.
The very existence of our way of life is an existential threat to the CCP.
So they had plans, whether it's economically, militarily, technology, SBNC, everything.
They had a comprehensive plan to infiltrate the West and to bring down our way of life here.
And that's why people really need to wake up.
Why Film Matters00:03:10
And I, as a filmmaker, I believe film is one of the most important tools.
If you drag someone on the street and say, let me tell you about human rights in China for two hours, most will say, no, thank you.
But if you tell them a compelling story through a film, not only do they remember it, they resonate with it.
And they feel it.
So they can go ahead and share with their family and friends.
So I think that's hopefully an important way to shed light on these kinds of issues.
Now, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I know that your film is in theaters in Canada right now.
I was able to catch it in Edmonton.
What are some of the ways that people can find your film?
What cities is the film in?
And I know that it is available online very, very soon, but not quite yet.
So how can people find the work, but also support the work that you're doing?
Because you are an independent filmmaker.
And I doubt that you will ever have the backing of a big Hollywood studio.
And that is not to say that you don't deserve it.
It's just that they're too scared to give it.
They are certainly too scared.
And I was hoping to get the film to some of the, let's say, big screening platforms.
And so far, from what I can tell, they were also scared to take it on.
So we're still exploring digital options, but we don't have anything lined up yet, unfortunately.
It's in theaters now in Canada, in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, and so on.
So, if you go to unsilencedmovie.com, you'll see a full list of theaters there.
And if you could consider supporting us, it would be very helpful because it's incredibly difficult for indie films like ours to have a theatrical run.
And if we demonstrate that people actually want to see content like this, then there may be more opportunities in the future.
Leanne, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, but also for your bravery.
I know that, like you say, you've faced some intimidation here in Canada for the work that you're doing to shine light on the stories of human rights atrocities in China.
And, you know, a special thanks to everybody who was involved in the film because they face those same sort of intimidation challenges as well.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview and best of luck on the film.
Thank you for having me.
To see Leon's movie and to get showtimes in your area, please go to unsilencedmovie.com.
It's a tough two hours to watch, but I think we all should.
I think we must know what China is capable of.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.