En film inspirerad av verkliga händelser under covidutbrottet | NTD NYHETER

Yanma, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Now, your latest film is a political thriller titled Unrestricted War. First, tell us about why it's called Unrestricted War and give us a sense what viewers can expect watching this. This film is inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and a few other related events. We did a lot of research, especially focused on the very early stage of the pandemic, how the CCP authority actually manipulated the information and later on even weaponized the situation and eventually turned it into a global pandemic. In my opinion, I think it's something that was preventable and eventually turned into a very global disaster. This is actually all linked to a concept of a military strategy called Unrestricted Warfare. It's written by two PLA People's Liberation Army officers, and they have this concept of using all means necessary rather than a conventional warfare to conquer the enemy, to defeat the enemy. It is incredible that, you know, after so many years, we still don't know exactly what happened in those early days, right? And given that many people want to move on from the pandemic, it has been a couple of years now. Talk to us about why it's so important, especially for Americans, Canadians. You have a Canadian virologist as one of the main characters. Why is it so important for us to revisit how and why the Chinese communist regime covered up the early stages of the pandemic? I grew up in China as a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker. I kind of understand very well how they censor the news and manipulate the public in this kind of situation. I've been through this very systematic brainwash since we were kids, but still it's shocking for us to see what they did in the very beginning of the pandemic, how they handled the whistleblower, what they did on the news. I was thinking this is actually important because in the past decades, this whole system has turned many Chinese people into victims. But during the pandemic, actually, the harm didn't stop within China, that actually all the people around the world become victims of the same system. And we need to prepare for the future. If something in the future, something worse happens in the future, something more deadly than COVID, then we may not have a second chance. We may not be so lucky next time. Looking back at those early days, it was kind of interesting, right? You see the Chinese regime stopping flights from Wuhan to other parts of China, but not globally. And so these people, maybe they are infected, they themselves don't know. They go all around the world and you start seeing those bubbles. I know we were all watching the COVID tracker from the university, right? Just watching the whole map just bubbling up, getting red all over. And that fear that people were feeling, not knowing, just not knowing if people were going to die. There were a lot of people who died, right? All sorts of devastation, economic life, everything from that. As you mentioned, though, we need to prepare for anything that might come down the road. So touch on that again for us, why it's so important for people to watch this film and learn that. We are so connected in many ways with China, right? For conventional warfare, we understand this happens on the battlefield for the soldiers. But actually, this kind of new format of warfare actually turned our everyday life into some kind of battlefield. It could happen to our co-workers. Actually, all the Chinese-owned and operated social media platforms could actually impact our neighbors, our friends, our public opinions. So to realize this threat is actually very important for the Western public because it's a new concept and it is everywhere. And it's doing real harm to the whole world. Lately, there's been more focus on China or the Chinese regime's long arm or transnational repression, trying to silence dissidents, not just inside China, but overseas as well. Why you often don't see China, communist China's true nature is covered in films, especially. Talk to us about the process of making this film and the threats and harassments that you and your family faced. Making this film has definitely been a very difficult journey for us. We kind of knew this from the very beginning. And my producers and I, we were talking about this a few times during the production because many of our crew, they still have family members in China, including myself. A few of my relatives were harassed and threatened by the National Security Office and some local government officials. And while my immediate family member, the income got cut off by the local government. And since the beginning, since I started the project, so it's almost been two years, it's still cut off. But we still decided to move forward. Like I said, we all feel this is an important topic and we feel the responsibility to do it as well, because there are so many brilliant filmmakers in China, but they simply can't work on a film like this because they don't have the freedom to do it. So I mean, at least we are in Canada, so we have the chance to work on it. So that's why we did our very best. People will just see communist China and say, oh, there's just another competitor. It's just any other country. But it doesn't really seem like the Chinese regime plays by the same rules, right? Fundamentally, let's see this. As someone who grew up in China, I mean, the system, I understand their brainwash system. So to them, they never really treat foreign countries like the US or Canada or the Western countries, they never treat them like a competitor. They always treat them as an enemy. I think this is the most important thing that we should understand. Because when you grow up in China, all you learn from the textbook as a child is how all the Western countries invaded China, how humiliated it is, and all this hate propaganda made the seeds of hate grow in their heart. So eventually, when they need to manipulate people's opinion, they can easily just use hate as a weapon. To them, it's a war. It's just in different formats, I think. Very different starting point, for sure, than that ideological and all the actions that follow. With everything covered, though, where can people go to watch Unrestricted War? Unrestricted War will be released on Genshin World Plus on August 8th. It will be multi-language. I think all the audience around the world can watch it there. Very exciting. And congrats on this. Yanma, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.