Great evening with the “Sunflower Occupation” movie

The documentary detailed the 24 days occupation of Taiwan’s parliament starting on March 18 2014. The movie provided great behind the scene insights into the thoughts of the students who occupied the parliamen. It is a great movie but in order to attract a wider European audience, the movie is in a need of some improvements. The movie is two hours long and during those two hours it fails to cover clearly the background of the occupation, the agreement with Taiwan’s legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng and the political reaction from the for instance KMT, DPP and others.

The cinema Huset in central Copenhagen was full on March 3 when Taiwan Corner and We Taipei Ren Studio arranged a screening of the documentary “Sunflower Occupation”. It was especially encouraging that so many Danish people showed up to watch the movie together with Taiwanese and people from Hong Kong. We in Taiwan Corner tries to reach out to Europeans in order to spread knowledge about Taiwan.  It was an emotional evening for many Taiwanese going through this historical event in Taiwan’s democratic development.

The documentary detailed the 24 days occupation of Taiwan’s parliament starting on March 18 2014. The movie provided great behind the scene insights into the thoughts of the students who occupied the parliament during the occupation and how they handled an occupation that was unplanned. Moreover, it revealed how some of the students became leaders by taking the lead at the right moment in the parliament and how students engaged in democratic decision-making. As the movie showed, several issues came up shortly after the occupation had started. It was for instance a big challenge in the beginning to ensure essential things like food and water and to handle toilets facilities. Also, the students had to stay healthy exercising and going to medical check-ups. Moreover, some students were contacted by their parents by phone trying to persuade their children to leave the parliament.


It is a great movie but in order to attract a wider European audience, the movie is in a need of some improvements. The movie is two hours long and during those two hours it fails to cover clearly the background of the occupation, the agreement with Taiwan’s legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng and the political reaction from the for instance KMT, DPP and others. It also focuses only on a few of the Sunflower leaders. For a Dane or other Europeans, who are not as familiar with the Sunflower Movement as the Taiwanese are and others who have followed the occupation and the social movements in details, the movie can appear unstructured.  The movie will improve significantly with a better structure and more background material. After the movie, many people stayed in the café talking about the movie with members of Taiwan Corner and with each other. It was an emotional and touching movie evening for many Taiwanese and one came all the way from another part of Denmark to watch the movie.