A documentary highlighting the forced organ harvesting abuse that the Chinese regime perpetuates is hoping for a bigger platform: the Oscars.
“State Organs,” which tracks the journey of two families searching for their missing loved ones in China, is currently one of around 170 contenders for the 2025 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature Film. It’s also a candidate for the Best Original Score.
“Truth is power,” producer Cindy Song told The Epoch Times. She said that even though the Chinese Communist Party has sought to use state power to cover up the ongoing abuse, their film will present to people a chance to learn about what is happening.
Forced organ harvesting, the act of taking unconsenting individuals’ organs for sale, happens in China on a significant scale, targeting prisoners of conscience such as detained practitioners of Falun Gong, a belief with spiritual teachings and meditative exercises that has faced severe persecution in China since 1999. The number of people practicing Falun Gong is around 70 million to 100 million by some estimates.
“In terms of the brutality and the scale, this issue is beyond comprehension,” she said. “The world needs to know about it.”
The Canadian film has won two Leo Awards for Best Direction and Best Musical Score in 2023 in the feature-length documentary category, an Award of Excellence at The Accolade Global Film Competition in March, Art Film Spirit Awards, and the Best Human Rights Documentary at the 2024 Manhattan Film Festival.
It has screened in Taiwan, New York, San Francisco, and Japan in recent weeks, and some audience members were in tears after watching the film. But as the film appeared in theaters, it also drew the attention of Chinese operatives.
In Taiwan in particular, journalists, lawmakers, and theaters have received a barrage of threats telling them not to write about, promote, or host the film screening. When local police investigated, they began to receive similar email harassment as well. These threats include possible bombing, shooting, and hacking of personal information. All of them were fake, the police have said.
The campaign has backfired, as Taiwan’s legislators hosted screenings in city councils and spoke about it publicly in support. Taiwan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee described the harassment as a part of the regime’s long-arm influence campaign and convened a hearing on it, asking officials in charge of cultural, national security, and cross-strait matters for their response.
“We can’t be scared off by these behind-the-scenes threats. We have to continually speak up,” Chen Xianwei, a Taipei legislator, said in a speech at a Nov. 30 screening event that his city council hosted.
Hung Chien-yi, another Taipei City Council member, similarly said that he believes “every democratic country in the world deserves to learn about it.”
The first round of voting for Oscars is currently underway, with a shortlist of 15 films to come out on Dec. 17.
From The Epoch times