Invisible Nation (2024), by Vanessa Hope
Out of the 195 countries in the world, only 28 are governed by women. It doesn’t mean that all of these female leaders are forward-thinking and deserve their own documentary — Italy, for instance has as its Prime Minister a conservative female politician. But there are some women in power who deserve a bigger chance to shine, with their actions and the history of their countries reaching a bigger audience through movies. This is the case of Tsai Ing-wen, whose country of Taiwan and its geopolitical issues become closer and clearer to us thanks to the documentary “Invisible Nation”.
Taiwan is just another nation in the world — except that it isn’t. Its full name is “Republic of China — Taiwan” differing it from the “People’s Republic of China”. China banned Taiwan to use its on flag and national anthem in the Olympics and even bullied a K-Pop band member into recording a video saying that “the two sides of the strait make only one China”. China also pressures countries to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and does military demonstrations to show their power over what they claim to be their province.
Eighty miles separate China and Taiwan, but the two countries couldn’t be more different, even though the Chinese think of them as “one country, two systems”. Taiwan has always been a colonized land, as it is a passage point for several commercial routes. It was occupied by the Dutch, the Spanish, Chinese dynasties and Japan. In 1949, with the Chinese Revolution, China’s disgraced president Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters flew to Taiwan, while in China Mao Tsé-tung took power. The government in Taiwan was recognized and supported by the USA, while China receive support from the Soviet Union — it was the Cold War mirrored in a small portion of land in Asia. Democracy was finally and first experienced in Taiwan in 2000, with general elections.
As it happened in many other countries in the world in the early 2010s, in Taiwan a movement for change raised and was baptized the Sunflower Movement. Led mostly by students, the movement started protesting against a treaty with China that was being considered that would weaken Taiwan’s economic and political independency. There is no doubt that the Sunflower Movement was in part responsible for Tsai’s election in 2016.
In 2012 the presidential election was between Tsai, who wanted Taiwan to develop freely, and Ma Ying-jeou, who wanted a stronger relationship with China. In the occasion, Tsai lost the presidency, but in her second attempt, four years later, she won. Tsai became only the seventh president of Taiwan and stayed in power from 2016 to 2024.
Under Tsai’s presidency, Taiwan was the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, the documentary tells us. It also responded quickly and effectively to the Covid-19 pandemic, having until today a little more than 19,000 deaths from over 10 million cases — something the documentary doesn’t tell us, but is worth sharing.
Director and producer Vanessa Hope has a longtime story with Asia. She worked on foreign policy issues at the Council on Foreign Relations with Senior Fellow and Director of Asia Studies Elizabeth Economy. About filming “Invisible Nation”, she has declared:
“It has been an honor and a privilege to be granted the extraordinary access that I was given to President Tsai, and it was genuinely inspiring to learn from her and from Taiwan’s example of resilience and hope in the face of danger and despair, of truth and reconciliation in the face of lies, and disinformation, and of progress for women and minorities in the face of regression, discrimination and silencing of the same groups in authoritarian China and an increasingly authoritarian U.S.”
The documentary may be less about Tsai and more about the foreign affairs surrounding Taiwan, even though the president is given a chance to shine, even showing some pictures of her growing up. In a moment at the documentary Tsai says that “Maybe I’m an exception. Maybe I’m an example that can be more broadly applied.” “Invisible Nation” doesn’t exist to paint Tsai as a role model, although she seems like a good one, but to introduce the geopolitical issues of Taiwan to the West. And it succeeds, because few documentaries are as informative as this one.
