The documentary Beyond Beauty: Taiwan From Above (看見台灣) has overtaken Go Grandriders (不老騎士) as the highest-grossing documentary in the nation’s history, the film’s distributor said yesterday.
Over the weekend, Beyond Beauty broke the NT$30 million (US$1.01 million) box office record set by Go Grandriders, according to Activator Marketing Co.
TEN-DAY RECORD
Beyond Beauty, which captures the beauty of the nation from the air, set a new box-office record by grossing more than NT$35 million just 10 days after opening on Nov. 1.
Go Grandriders, a story about 17 elderly men who embarked on a motorcycle journey around the country, took 63 days to reach the NT$30 million mark.
BIGGEST DAY
The highest single-day gross for Beyond Beauty was Nov. 9, when it raked in NT$6.5 million countrywide, Activator Marketing said.
Celebrities and other prominent figures have given the film positive reviews and it is currently being screened in 51 cinemas around the nation.
Chinese pro-democracy activist Wang Dan (王丹), a student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China, said on his Facebook page on Sunday that words could not express how touched he was by the film.
“I think anyone who has seen this documentary would fall in love with this country,” Wang wrote.
MESSAGE
The documentary was made over a period of more than three years by director Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), an aerial photographer and former civil servant who quit his job to pursue the project.
It gives viewers rare bird’s-eye glimpses of Taiwan’s natural beauty, from mountains to oceans, and sends a strong message about the importance of environmental protection.
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