"Night is not Eternal" with Nanfu Wang

Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

Today we speak with Nanfu Wang, about her new documentary, “Night is not Eternal,” a portrait of the Cuban struggle for democracy, with a focus on Cuban human rights activist Rosa Maria Payá.

Nanfu was previously on the pod discussing her last documentary “In the Same Breath”, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2022. In that film, Nanfu found the focus of her previous work, which had been situated firmly on her native China slipping a bit, and found herself examining the way the America that she had immigrated to dealt with the COVID crisis as well as the Chinese response.

In a similar manner, “Night is not Eternal”, as you’ll hear, was meant at first to be a portrait of Cuban Activist Rosa Maria Payá, as well as of Rosa’ father, Oswaldo, in a sense a legendary advocate of democracy for Cuba, and one who was killed by the security services of the nation he had refused to leave. But the portrait of Rosa and the focus on Cuba spawned an almost mirror-like depiction of Nanfu herself, and her own wishes for an end to authoritarianism in her home county. And, over the years that she shot and edited the film, she found that she was beginning to recognize some early warnings of authoritarianism in her adopted country, one that, especially upon becoming the mother of a Chinese-American child, she had grown to love.

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