Angels Wear White director Vivian Qu on #MeToo movement, sexual abuse cases in China, and Vicky Chen’s film debut
A film for the ages, Qu’s second feature revolves around a young girl’s fight for justice in China over a sexual assault and a teenage witness to the crime
When Chinese director Vivian Qu’s second feature film, Angels Wear White, received its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September 2017, the talk was mostly about the gender imbalance in the film business.
Qu was the only woman filmmaker vying for the festival’s main prize last year and only the second woman director from China to have had a film in competition for the Golden Lion since 1993.
She went on to win the best director honour at the prestigious Golden Horse Awards in Taipei in November, but her film has gained more recognition, at least internationally, for its storyline about young girls fighting for justice after being sexually assaulted. It seemed prescient given the #MeToo movement that saw waves of sexual harassment allegations against men in Hollywood and beyond after film mogul Harvey Weinstein was confronted in October with multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
Qu’s film may have arrived at just the right moment, but the director is adamant that the new-found awareness of sexual abuse must bring lasting change.
These kinds of issues have been around for ages, she says. “They’re not something that [comes] and [goes]. So I hope that [#MeToo] will not be just a movement – you know, this year we’ll do this, next year we’ll do something else. No, it should be a constant fight.”
