Joshua Wong on Hong Kong human rights, those CIA rumours, and his Sundance winner Teenager vs Superpower
Joe Piscatella’s documentary on the Hong Kong student activist premiered at the independent film festival, and Wong gave a speech the following day
Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung was not on stage when his new documentary film portrait, Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower, won the audience award in the World Cinema Documentary category in Sundance on Saturday. But his presence had already been felt at the independent film festival in Park City, Utah.
“Thank you Sundance for giving us a venue to show this film about human rights violations going on halfway around the world in Hong Kong,” said the film’s American director, Joe Piscatella, on stage with British producer Matthew Torne.
“These films aren’t made without an amazing team and I need to thank my producer Matthew Torne, who not only had the wherewithal to discover our hero Joshua Wong in a park at age 13 rocking a mike and getting a crowd rolling, he also had the wherewithal to turn his camera on.”
At the awards after-party, Torne tells me: “I’m just really pleased that we made a film about kids leading a democracy movement, and that we were democratically elected for best film.”
