How Goddamned Asura, Taiwan’s 2023 Oscar hope for best international feature, shows we all have a dark side
- Goddamned Asura director and co-writer Lou Yi-an says his characters all have flaws and the film asks whether their sins are too big to be forgiven
- The actors were given the freedom to go off script and react to each other in ways they felt fitted the scene, leading to several ‘richer’ takes, he says
Bullets ring out in a crowded night market in Taiwan’s capital Taipei, hitting random strangers. As shoppers flee, a journalist tackles the shooter, bringing him down. The aftermath of the incident, played out from various viewpoints, exposes deep fault lines in Taiwanese society.
“I decided to depict a random killing after reading news articles about a similar occurrence in 2014,” says Lou Yi-an, director and co-writer of Goddamned Asura, which has been selected as Taiwan’s submission for the best international feature category at the 2023 Academy Awards.
“People debating the death penalty called the perpetrator a demon, which made me uncomfortable. What kind of person deserves to die because of a crime he committed? I wanted to explore the real person behind that debate.”
Goddamned Asura is Lou’s third feature, after A Place of One’s Own (2009) and White Lies, Black Lies (2016).
Lou tells the story from several viewpoints: a workaholic media manager, a manga artist, a gaming-obsessed clerk, a struggling student living in subsidised housing. Each one is depicted with unusual insight and sympathy.