Taiwanese-Burmese director Midi Z’s (趙德胤) film Ice Poison (冰毒) will represent the nation to vie for the Oscar for best foreign-language film at next year’s Academy Awards, the Ministry of Culture said on Tuesday.
The film, shot in Myanmar, charts economic despair in the rural and developing parts of the Southeast Asian country.
It centers on a poor farmer who is lured into selling crystal meth, called “ice poison” in Chinese.
The juries said they selected the film because it, in a way close to a documentary, portrays realistically the sadness of the Burmese people and Taiwanese expatriates and the humanity that they display as they make their way through a tough environment.
Midi Z was caught by surprise and rendered speechless when he learned that his film had been chosen.
“I am only a small potato in film circles. I’m extremely honored to be able to represent Taiwan to vie for an Oscar. [I want to] thank Taiwan for respecting diversity and seeing possibility in the film,” he said.
Ice Poison is Midi Z’s top-grossing film and the one that has won the most awards.
It won the award for best international feature film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Midi Z was named best director for his work on the movie at the Taipei Film Awards in July.
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (李安) watched Ice Poison at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and was full of praise.
Lee said that the film has inherited the aesthetic style of Taiwan’s New Wave school of film, yet uses the linear narrative structure of mainstream cinema.
The work is Midi Z’s third feature film, after Return to Burma (歸來的人, 2011) and Poor Folk (窮人。榴槤。麻藥。偷渡客, 2012).
Born in 1982 in Myanmar, Midi Z studied film direction in Taiwan and graduated with his first short film, Paloma Blanca, in 2006.
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