Among all his current film projects, Tôn Thất An has completed the score for a new short film, this time a VR project, entitled Somewhere Unknown in Indochina 中南半島未知某處, by documentary director Asio Liu Chih-Siung, which tells how a group of Vietnamese fled the country by boat after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and drifted for several weeks, seeing their numbers dwindle tragically from 146 to 46, ended up stranded on a small reef and eventually be rescued by a Taiwanese boat which took the survivors to the refugee camp on Penghu Island, off the coast of Taiwan.

“I knew how many boat people drifted southward towards Malaysia, but I was totally unaware of that refugee camp in Taiwan! So when Liu Chih-Siung told me what his film was about, and how he came to dedicate so many years and many of his films on that topic, I knew I could not say no. This is part of my history, doubly so, because I live in Taiwan now.“

The film is part VR live action and part animation. The animation part is done by Tsou Feng Ting.

“It isn’t exactly virtual reality, because an important section of the film is based on drawing, as if you suddenly step into a 360 degrees graphic novel. The effect is stunning.”

The film is part of a trilogy on the Penghu Refugee Camp and was selected for the Venice Production Bridge at the 2022 79th Venice Film Festival.

Testing the VR

Another collaboration with cellist Emily Chang