The Halfway

High in the mountains of Taiwan, is the remote village of Smangus. Inhabited by a unique group of indigenous people called the Tayal, Smangus is the only place in Taiwan that now practices common ownership of land and property. This is a place where nature and man have found balance. Now, witness every part of the lives of these people, through pain and joy, and experience the unique bonds formed with the ancient trees around them, in a film that documents A Year In The Clouds - a year amongst the sacred forests of this tribe.

A Tayal family faces emotional and spiritual challenges after the passing of their grandfather. Their unfamiliarity with Gaga, the ancestral ethical system, reveals deeper cultural dissonance and generational gaps shaped by decades of assimilation policies and influences. Set against a postcolonial backdrop, SPI traces how one family, caught between modernity and indigenous memory, strives to carry forward the Tayal spirit left behind by their elders.

In the documentary “Millets Back Home,” we will see the everyday lives of the Tayal people, an indigenous people of Taiwan, stringing together the stories of three families with the unifying thread of millet (“trakis” in the Tayal language). The documentary brings to light the pressing issues indigenous people face today: the shift in farming patterns, the migration of indigenous youth, and the need for preserving and restoring traditional culture. With this film, Director Sayun also explores self-identity in connection with indigenous identity.

This is a story about indigenous people's land rights. In order to learn more about the history of the Atayal people’s migration, the director traces the journey of the Atayal ancestors.

In the Sqoyaw Indigenous community in Heping Township, Taichung County, a group of Atayal elders lament the fact that millet, one of the most important crops in Atayal culinary culture, has disappeared from the community for nearly half a century. No one knows why the community is no longer growing millet. No one has explored the importance of millet to the lives of ancestors in the past. It gradually disappeared in everyone’s memory... After half a century, the elders in Sqoyaw decide to sow the millet seeds once again and pass on millet knowledge to the next generation of Atayal descendants. Will they succeed in adhering to the ancestors' hard work and continue their relationships with the land?