Film screening: GAGA

Gaga《哈勇家》(2022)

Directed by Laha Mebow 112 mins, Mandarin/Atayal/Taiwanese, English subtitles

Among the Atayal indigenous people of Taiwan, gaga is the traditional law and custom, the way of living with the land and organising society, the source of values. When Hayung, the patriarch of an Atayal family, and the senior knowledge-keeper, dies, his oldest son Payang decides to run for election as head of the local district. The film Gaga follows this election, in its raw democratic, and occasionally corrupt, form and the ways – sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious – that it affects the extended family. A groundbreaking film, Gaga is mostly in Atayal language and presents the life and social interactions of these contemporary indigenous Taiwanese people unsentimentally, with humour, with compassion, and with the sharp eye of a brilliant film-maker.

Gaga won Best Director and Best Supporting Actress at the 59th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival in 2022. Beyond Taiwan, it won the Best Director at the 2022 Singapore International Film Festival - Asian Feature Competition and has been screened at film festivals in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Auckland and New York.

Q&A with Film Director Laha Mebow

We are delighted that Film Director Laha Mebow, Taiwan's first indigenous female director, will be attending the screening and take part in Q&A afterwards.

Laha Mebow is the first female director from Taiwan to win Best Director at the Golden Horse Awards, the most prestigious film award in the Chinese-speaking world. An Indigenous filmmaker of the Tayal people, she is also the first Indigenous woman in Taiwan to direct a narrative feature. Her films explore spiritual inheritance, family trauma, and Indigenous identity through a deeply personal yet cinematic lens.

She has directed three feature films. Finding Sayun (2011) reimagines a colonial-era legend from an Indigenous perspective. Lokah Laqi! (2016), a coming-of-age tale of three Indigenous boys, was selected as Taiwan’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Her third feature, Gaga (2022), won Best Film at the Singapore International Film Festival and delves into generational shifts and cultural survival within an Indigenous family.

Laha’s body of work continues to break new ground for Indigenous representation in Asian cinema. Her unique voice bridges traditional storytelling and contemporary filmmaking, making her one of the most important and anticipated directors from Taiwan today.

Host or Publisher ANU Taiwan Studies Program & PSIR, VUW