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Taiwanese filmmakers Nelson Yeh and Herb Hsu and U.S.-based, Taiwan-born writer-director Weiko Lin discussed strategies for taking Taiwanese content global at a seminar during Taiwan Creative Content Fest (Tccf) on Wednesday.

Lin is gearing up to direct Chalk, a thriller with U.S. and Taiwanese elements to be produced by Yeh’s Taipei-based Good Image and US producer Dave A. Liu’s Liucrative Media.

The film revolves around a single mother who witnesses a murder, then is assigned a policeman to protect her who turns out to be her estranged son. Lin, who is repped by Anonymous Content and UTA, has recently been scouting locations in Boston.

Lin originally wrote the script as a wholly English-language project, but then decided to bring in Taiwanese characters and changed the script to include dialogue in both English and Chinese. Citing hits such as Past Lives, Minari and Everything Everywhere All At Once,...

Reverse engineering a previously English-language script into a bilingual, dual-location thriller is one possible route to giving Taiwanese feature films a better shot in the international marketplace. So too, is adapting a previously successful romantic novel that could be partly filmed in the U.K.

Both approaches were spelled out on Wednesday at a panel discussion at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest titled ‘Where is the silver lining for Tw film?’ The session involved well-established director Nelson Yeh (“Night Market Hero”), U.S.-based director Weiko Lin and Taiwan female actor and screenwriter Herb Hsu (“Untold Herstory”).

Over the course of the session, the trio mentioned various challenges facing the Taiwanese industry. These included viewer distraction by micro-length videos, poor levels of audience support for local titles (especially art house films and those in minority languages), a lack of female film directors, as well as an over-familiarity with Hollywood content.

Three female convicts transferred to the New Life Correction Center for communists and traitors on Green Island (formerly known as Bonfire Island) are subjected to unspeakable humiliation and abuse in Zero Chou’s dark drama “Untold Herstory”, that has just had its European premiere at IFFR. The year is 1953, and the White Terror period is in full swing. Many people, most of them students, are being apprehended for innocent offenses such as saying something wrong, reading banned (mainly leftist) books, or for being related or befriended to the ‘enemies of the state’. Some are being reported as spies as a spiteful act of retaliation, and others for refusing men’s advances. Only few can call themselves guilty, if being a communist is still considered a crime.

Untold Her Story screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam

“Untold Herstory” pulls many tricks out of the epic historical dramas hat:...