Hsu Ming-chun

The film documents the rise and fall of the Wufeng Lin family in Wufeng, Taiwan over the turbulent years of Taiwan under the administrations of the Qing dynasty, Japan, and Republic of China.

A TV program "One Million Star" was firstly aired in 2007. It claimed to be the biggest singing contest in Taiwanese TV history and promised the first-place winner a record contract and one million NT dollars (about 30,000 USD). The show caused an unanticipated sensation. Through this film, we will see how Taiwanese young people hang on to their dreams in a seemingly hopeless and desperate society.

Eighty years after World War II, memory clings like frost to glass-blurred, fractured, yet never fully fading. Filmmaker Ming Chun retraces the forgotten journey of Taiwanese soldiers conscripted by Japan, captured by the Soviets, and exiled to Siberia. From departure and defeat to captivity and return, he follows a path of war and displacement-toward a home that no longer felt like home. Across Taiwan, Japan, and Russia, he searches for traces of their lives-abandoned camps, fading photographs, fragments of memory-while opening a dialogue across three generations: elders whose recollections falter, children burdened with unanswered questions, grandchildren confronting fractured identities. When history falls silent, what do we hear? And where do restless souls finally belong?