Keff, director of “Gangs of Taiwan”: “It is important that Taiwanese youth have a voice”
The Taiwanese-American filmmaker's first feature film is released in France on July 30. With the feel of a gangster film, "Gangs of Taiwan" explores the despair of the island's youth, while relations with China remain very tense. Interview.
[This article was first published on our site on May 22, 2024, and was updated and republished on July 30, 2025]
The first scene of Gangs of Taiwan takes place in a Taipei laundromat in June 2019. A television screen flashes images of Hong Kong, where people are demonstrating en masse against Beijing's takeover of the former British colony. Two young people in the shop don't seem to be paying any attention: their eyes glued to their cell phones, they're excited about a new cake on sale.
From the outset, Keff, a 34-year-old Taiwanese-American director, sets the tone. In his first feature film, which was presented in 2024 at the Cannes Film Festival 's Critics' Week (under the title Locust ), the former DJ intends to question the attitude of Taiwanese youth towards the threats that China poses to the island – and their apparent indifference to the repression that has befallen Hong Kong .
For this, he chose the prism of the gangster film. His hero, Zhong-Han (Liu Wei Chen), is a young man from the countryside who leads a double life in the Taiwanese capital: during the day, he works in the diner run by his adoptive parents; at night, he plays the tough guy for a gang of teenagers who
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