On Jan. 21, around 9:00 p.m., when the film “Unsilenced” was just finishing in Hall 10 of Cinemark in Fairfax County, Virginia, the audience stayed motionless in their seats. Ten seconds, 20 seconds, even 30 seconds passed … no one spoke or stood up as the screen kept scrolling with the cast’s names. Some were wiping away tears, apparently unable to pull themselves from the story so soon.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently watched the movie in the same theater. He called the film “a moving, honest, scathing indictment of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].”
“The truth of Xi & his predecessors’ utter depravity & the power-driven horrors they’ve inflicted cannot be denied,” he wrote on Twitter and encouraged people to watch it. “This movie unsilences the wonderful Chinese people.”
My friend Miles Yu & I went to see Unsilenced – a moving, honest, scathing indictment of the CCP. The truth of Xi & his predecessors' utter depravity & the power-driven horrors they've inflicted cannot be denied. This movie unsilences the wonderful Chinese people, go see it. pic.twitter.com/Mv7ECNP1KO
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) January 28, 2022
In theaters in Mesa, Arizona, and in Raleigh, North Carolina, the audience gave a standing ovation at the end of the movie.
“Unsilenced” has since its debut on Jan. 21 been released in 30 U.S. cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and San Diego. So far, the showtimes have been extended for another week until Feb. 3.
Canadian filmmaker Leon Lee presents a story of two couples of Chinese college students, who risked their lives to reveal the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) appalling persecution of peaceful Falun Gong adherents. With the help of a Chicago journalist, they successfully unearth the CCP’s dehumanizing abuses to the international community.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that features three core tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, along with five slow-moving exercises. After it was made public in 1992, its following in China grew to an estimated 70 million to 100 million people in 1999. The CCP, deeming the practice’s popularity a threat, then launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate it.
The production is based on actual events in connection with practitioner Wang Weiyu, a gifted graduate of China’s Tsinghua University. Wang experienced torture, including hours of electrocution by electric baton, during eight and half years’ imprisonment in Beijing for refusing to give up his belief in Falun Gong. In 2013, he fled communist China and joined his family in the United States.
By Frank Yue and Sherry Dong
