WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? | ©2024 PBS

The documentary WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? premieres in theatres on Friday, September 20, and then debuts on PBS’s POV series on Monday, September 23. The film centers on young Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law who, with friends Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, paid a heavy price for opposing China’s efforts to impose its own style of government on the island.

WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? is directed and written by Joe Piscatella, who is also one of its producers. Another of the film’s producers, Matthew Torne, and PBS POV executive producer Chris White, sit down during PBS’s portion of the summer Television Critics Association press tour to discuss the documentary.

Torne’s previous work includes the 2017 documentary focusing on Wong, JOSHUA: TEENAGER VS. SUPERPOWER, which is available on Netflix. Torne, Piscatella and fellow producer Mark Rinehart earned a Producers Guild of America Award nomination for that feature.

When Torne began making that film, what was his prior filmmaking experience? “When I started making the film about Joshua, I had been working on a POV film called ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE, about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It was a great movie I had totally underestimated the skill and everything else that went into making that film. But I thought, ‘Hey.’ I was young and naïve, and I thought I could do it,” he laughs. “But I think at the end of the day, if you know what a good story is, then you can learn everything else.”

Torne relates that the origins of WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? are a “long story. I did my Masters dissertation on the Hong Kong democracy movement, or how Hong Kong maybe could become a democracy, and I was looking to do a PhD, and my advisor said to me, ‘You really sure you want to do that? Because no one’s going to read it, and it’s just going to sit in a library, gathering dust.’

“And so, I went to Hong Kong – I had previously lived in Hong Kong – and I started interviewing some of the old grandees of the Hong Kong HOS [Home Owners Society] movement, and realized that it wasn’t going to be that interesting. Then I met Joshua, who was only fourteen, and he was really articulate and interesting, and I thought, ‘Wow, here’s a new generation. This could be something interesting.’ So, I started talking to his parents and he agreed, and we thought, ‘Let’s put a camera in there and let’s see what happens.’

“That was 2011, and then, as the years rolled by, we just filmed and filmed. We made [JOSHUA: TEENAGER VS. SUPERPOWER] with him. Joshua didn’t know Nathan until the Umbrella Movement happened in 2014. So, through Joshua, I also met Nathan, because I was just around Joshua all the time, filming him. And so, it seemed perfectly natural when we came to say, ‘Well, we can update the story, more things have happened since our previous film, and we need to tell this next film. Rather than making it a sequel, let’s make it a companion piece.’

“Nathan and Joshua are like two side of the same coin in many ways, because they worked together so closely, they had their own political party, which they had formed together. But they also were incredibly different personality types. So, it seemed you had the one who’s the activist, and you have the other, who’s a reluctant hero. And it just seemed that Nathan was a great conduit to tell this next chapter through, after having already told the first chapter with Joshua.”

WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? key art | ©2024 PBS

One big difference between the earlier JOSHUA documentary and WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? was, Torne explains, “I had been living, or spending part of my time, in Hong Kong for the last ten years. I had a huge network of friends and crew members that we could rely on, and I had been involved in really helping Joshua with his activism on the international side. Whenever he came to London, I would look after him, and be involved in that.

“So, to a certain extent, I was very close to the activist community, which meant that people were willing to help. Obviously, we couldn’t name them on the final film, because of repercussions, but this film could never have been made without all of their contributions. Their contribution is huge in this film.

“Hong Kong is becoming much, much closer to China this year, but it’s not quite the same yet. Ten years ago, when I first made a film in Hong Kong, I was able to go to the Hong Kong government archives and just request tapes. There’s no copyright on those tapes, and they’re supposed to give them to you freely, because you’re press, and I could just do that. I could just go into the Hong Kong government archives and say, ‘I want this, this, this, this,’ and they would just give them to me. There was no problem,” Torne laughs.

“Now, there’s no way they’d do that. I wouldn’t even be allowed in the building, let alone given the tapes. So, yeah, things like that become harder. I think access to people, even if you couldn’t always film them, because people were scared, you always still had that.”

Also, not being able to access the Hong Kong government archives didn’t mean that Torne couldn’t get footage from, say, 2009. “The amazing thing about Hong Kong,” Torne reveals, “is that everyone’s got an iPhone and a camera. And because we have a network of friends and activists and people in the community, I was able to say, ‘Hey, we really need some footage of this, this, and that. What have you guys got?’

“Sometimes I don’t even know necessarily who shot all of it, because friends have gone and gathered all this, and said, ‘Here you go.’ So, we were lucky to, a) have filmed a lot of things ourselves and b) able to draw on our really big network of activists and filmmakers and friends along the way who were there and had footage.”

What were Law, Wong and Chow fighting for? “Hong Kong has never been a democracy,” Torne says. “Hong Kong had the institutions of a democracy at the end of the British colonial era and the Chinese colonial era, where you had freedom of speech, you had freedom of movement, you had rule of law. You never had universal suffrage.

“The big fight has been to increase universal suffrage in Hong Kong. So, you have these very strange elections, where half the seats in the Council are elected by universal suffrage. The other half are elected by [different professional groups], like the accountants. The engineers all have a vote, the hotel industry. So, if you happen to be an accountant who worked in the hotel industry, you could have three votes. But if you just happen to be a construction worker, or a regular person, you only got one vote. What it meant was that there was no simple way that any democratic candidate could ever have a majority in government, because only half the seats there were elected.

“Now, after the protests of 2019, and the introduction of the National Security Law, anybody who is not ‘a patriot of China,’ as defined by the Chinese government, therefore, anyone who is not pro-Chinese government, can no longer stand for election, which means that you now have a situation where only half the seats are elected by universal suffrage, but people who stand for those seats have to be pro-government anyway. So, it’s like an Iranian-style democracy.”

Although politics are continually on the move, Torne doesn’t feel that WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? altered greatly between conception and production.

“The Hong Kong political movement was the thing I had studied the last twenty years, my entire adult life. So, I had a pretty good grip on what was happening, and where it was going. So, I don’t think the story really changed. Really, all that happened was, we shed some of the other elements, and it became much more Nathan-focused, as opposed to a wider film. But from the moment that we started really going into production, it never really changed, what we were setting out to achieve.”

What were some of the elements that were shed?

“Just more activism.” Torne relates. “Because Nathan, and Joshua to an extent, were very much leaders of the Umbrella Movement ten years ago. But when the protests broke out in 2019, which were much more violent, they weren’t really the leaders. It was a totally leaderless movement.

“We originally had interviews with a lot more activists who have been involved in some of those protests, but in the end, narratively, it just worked better with a straight through-line, a story that you can grasp.

“The other problem was, you have a lot of activists who, after the National Security law came into use by 2020, couldn’t have their faces shown. So, you’ve got all these interviews with people who are telling you interesting stories, but you can’t see their face. And when you can’t see their face, you run into this massive barrier. So, it felt like it was better just to tell [most] of our story through one person, through Nathan alone. So, I think if anything, I wouldn’t say the story changed, it just became more hyper-focused.”

In addition to the safety of interviewees, Torne continues, visually, not being able to show faces “was definitely a consideration. Secondly, I think there’s only so much that an audience can follow without having to have a ton of expository information, and give you an education on Hong Kong history.

“We’re not trying to give people a lesson in Hong Kong history, we’re trying to give them insight into what’s happened in Hong Kong in the last few years, as democratic institutions are being demolished, and how a group of activists, who went into activism believing that they could change our world for the better, unfortunately were thwarted, and there’s a very sad reality to that.”

In terms of PBS POV involvement, White relates, “We came on board WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? after it had premiered at a festival. In terms of the types of programming that POV looks for, in general, we’re not looking at issues from the top down, but from the vantage point of people like you and me, who are living their lives. I think in Nathan and Joshua and Agnes, it reminds me of my own children, in them is this sense of sort of inspiring idealism and naivete at the same time as they’re into this fight for democracy. It’s a really compelling human story that audiences are going to like.”

As for differences between the film festival version of WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? and the PBS version, White says, “By and large, [the POV edit] is the same version. I think maybe a minute or two had had to be trimmed to get to broadcast time, but that was pretty close.”

“Hardly any trims,” Torne agrees.

Torne relates that, as a filmmaker, during the making of WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW?, “I learned how to direct interviews, and, how to shoot completely remotely, because after the National Security Law and COVID, I couldn’t go to Hong Kong anymore, So, I went from being the guy on the ground to the guy who was in Europe, interviewing people in Hong Kong, and having to try do all that remotely. A lot of filmmakers [during] COVID learned that. But there was that added difficulty of doing interviews covertly. So, that was a challenge.”

In human terms, Torne continues, “The big thing that I learned is the mental toll, the mental anguish, that [the situation imposes] on these young people. But none of these – I call them ‘kids,’ because I met them when they were fourteen, and they are now young adults – none of them went in there thinking they were all going to become heroes, or they went in there naively thinking that maybe they could make things a better place. They were young.

“And the Chinese Communist Party is pretty brutal, and this is Joshua’s third time in jail. He’s been in jail now for close to three years. I haven’t written to him, because even though other friends of mine urged me to, because I know that the Communist Party is reading it, and there’s nothing that I can tell him that isn’t going to be censored. It’s just not going to help him. So, there’s no reason. He knows that I think about him.

Regarding contact with Wong, Torne elaborates, “It’s the same for Nathan and Agnes. I don’t think Nathan will mind me saying, he’s the one who got away. He was lucky. And he’s used that platform of being in England to really promote Hong Kong and what’s going on with these activists, he’s doing a fantastic job of it, he’s raising awareness in the U.K. Parliament, in the E.U. Parliament, in Washington, but I think he has to have anguish over the fact that his closest comrade on this journey is in jail. And Agnes also was in jail. I think it’s more difficult – she’s a young lady, and women face a different thing in jail. I think it took an incredible mental toll on her.

“Nathan is living a life in London through his activism, but there is a bounty on his head, which is kind of insane, and certainly there are Chinese spies on British soil, absolutely, most definitely. I don’t think they’re going to poison him, I don’t think it’s an Alexander Litvinenko type of situation – not yet, at least – but I think it makes his life difficult. It makes who he can trust difficult. He’s still a young man. Embarking on relationships with people is difficult. So, I think that that is really challenging, and I have definitely learned to admire them very much for it. Because I don’t know how I would approach it.”

Torne hasn’t felt personally endangered by making the film. “I know my way around Hong Kong well enough, even though I don’t go back there anymore.”

What was the division of filmmaking responsibilities between producer Torne and writer/director/producer Piscatella? “I conducted a lot of the interviews on this film,” Torne responds, “because I was either in Hong Kong or in London. Joe and I work quite well together. I have the academic background on the subject matter, and I have all the contacts and the friends in the community, and Joe has a huge amount of experience writing films and directing films. So, I don’t think it’s like an obvious, clear distinction of what Matthew does, what Joe does. I think we just work well together.”

Did Law have input into the filming and/or editing of WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW? “He watched the film,” Torne replies. “We were not going to show a film he wasn’t happy with. At the end of the day, we’re also documentary filmmakers, and there can’t be giving him the editorial [power], but it was a collaborative process.

“We’ve known each other long enough that the trust was there. I mean, I think we’re telling the truth of what happened. It’s not like some big secret that needs to be uncovered and exposed. So, I didn’t have any problems consulting Nathan, but I wasn’t looking for him to give his sign-off. But we still showed it to him and made sure that he was happy.”

For Torne’s next project, “I’m working on a big anthology about Western complicity in post-Soviet corruption, which is going to be a very large series. It’ll come out in a year or two.”

And what would White and Torne most like people to know about WHO’S AFRAID OF NATHAN LAW?

“Don’t take democracy for granted,” Torne declares. “I always relate democracy to a plant. If you don’t water it, it withers and dies. It’s got to be nourished to take root. The nourishment comes from participation. You can’t expect it to get better if you just sit on the sidelines and snipe about it. You have to actually actively participate in your political system, and what Joshua and Nathan did, we need to do that, whether that’s in Europe or the U.S., because as we can see around the world – I grew up at a time in the ‘90s when dictatorships were falling – the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the end of history as Francis Fukuyama wrote about.

“There was this kind of assumption, at least in my teenage years, that [all countries] would become democracies, and everything would be hunky-dory. And obviously, since the millennium, we can see that that’s not been the case, and that China has become much more aggressive under Xi Jinping in the last few years, and he’s put forth his own economic authoritarian model, and Putin is a kleptocratic model of government. So, if we want to have the good things that democracy brings for us – it’s not perfect, but if we want to enjoy the liberties that it brings, then we have to participate in it, to go and vote.”

For White, “As you think about an American audience, you think about the conversations that are going on about democracy and links to our own elections. In a different place and a different circumstance, what are the lessons that we can take from these young, active, invigorating participants who are putting their own lives at risk? The stakes are different for them, but as Matthew said, what are the changes that are happening in our own society that we need to be aware of? The insidious things that might be threatening our own democracy.”

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