The Day to Choose by Soochow’s Leon Lee and Cheng Kuang-Yu selected for Cannes’ Short Film Corner

A Taiwanese short film, The Day to Choose, by Soochow’s German major student Leon Lee, and Deputy Director Cheng Kuang-Yu of the Chinese Language Center, was selected by the Cannes Film Festival for the 2016 Short Film Corner. This film has also been nominated in the Best Foreign Short Film category by the Nice Film Festival, and has been awarded by the 2016 Universe Multicultural Film Festival in USA as the Best Drama Short Film.

After winning recognitions from the three prestigious festivals Executive Producer Cheng Kuang-Yu said he saw Lee’s potential in the campus film festival and decided to help him realize his dream. The Day to Choose, a 20 minutes film, took them three days to shoot, three months in editing, and a total of 600,000 NT$ to produce. Cheng said:” Hope this would encourage all those who desire to chase after their dreams.”

The script was a joint creation by Leon Lee and Cheng Kuang-Yu. In four acts, the short film starts with an undulating narration bridging reality and idealistic fiction. Three thought-provoking choices are presented with very stylized shooting and a plot that elicits audience philosophical thinking along with its ups and downs. Cheng said they tried to follow Hollywood’s pattern of a commercial thriller in dealing with such an issue as capital punishment. Given enough freedom Leon Lee proved that art and commerce are not necessarily incompatible. The result, Cheng said, was astonishing. 

Leon Lee, a senior of German Department, the director and screenwriter, regarded the abolition of death penalty a mere controversy but ultimately a philosophical framework packed with political considerations. He, therefore, left an open-ended closing in the hope that everyone would come to their own conclusions. Lee also found that his German friends and Taiwanese friends all reached new understanding of the issue because of their different cultural background.

Lee’s work, done when a university student, and selected into the 2016 Short Film Corner was a perfect example of how talents would glow when given opportunity. The glaring brilliance from Lee’s persistence and Cheng’s passion in film-making has brought glory to all faculty and students of Soochow University. After graduating from Soochow Lee said he would study film in Germany to have more thorough understanding about movie making.