Nelicia Low on how fencing and brotherly love inspired the Karlovy Vary premiere of 'Pierce'

Nelicia Low

Raised in Singapore, Nelicia Low began her filmmaking career after representing her country as a fencer. Retiring after the 2010 Asian Games, Low went on to earn her MFA in Filmmaking from Columbia University and direct a number of highly acclaimed short films, including Freeze (2016) which was screened at more than 70 festivals around the world, including Clermont-Ferrand and Busan.

His first feature film Pierce, The film, which premieres today (July 3) at the Crystal Globes in Karlovy Vary, is an intense psychological thriller in which young fencer Zijie (Liu Hsiu-Fu) dreams of reuniting with his older brother Zihan (Tsao Yu-Ning), who has been imprisoned as a juvenile for killing an opponent during a fencing match. Zijie is convinced that his brother is innocent. But when Zihan is released, Zijie soon begins to wonder whether his unwavering trust in his brother is justified.

The film is a Singapore-Taiwan-Poland co-production, produced by Singapore-based Potocol and Elysium Cinema, Taipei-based Flash Forward Entertainment and Poland-based Harine Films. The co-production company is Poland-based fixafilms. Worldwide sales are handled by Los Angeles- and New York-based Magnify.

How It was easy to raise funding for the film, especially since it was a co-production between Taiwan, Singapore and Poland.

The film was supposed to be set in Taiwan, so our first step in starting to finance it was to look for a Taiwanese co-producer, and I knew I always wanted to work with a European-based cinematographer, so we kept our eyes open for a European co-producer. We met Flash Forward Entertainment and Harine Films through Full Circle Lab Philippines, and we were able to secure financing in 16 months—quite a feat for a first feature.

What influences influenced Pierce?

The story is partly inspired by a real incident that happened in Taipei in 2014, while I was there making a short film: 21-year-old Cheng Chieh stabbed as many people as he could on the subway, killing four of them. As his younger brother visited him at the police station, crying, denying that his older brother could do something so monstrous, his parents took to the streets of Taipei to publicly apologize and beg the government to execute their son. His younger brother’s reaction reminded me strongly of my relationship with my older brother, who is autistic. When I was young, I idealized him as a loving and caring big brother, but as I grew up, I realized that our entire relationship was made up in my head.

When I grew up and really understood my brother’s condition, the strange thing was that the love I had for him, which was built on a fantasy, remained as strong and pure as ever. This is precisely what I want to explore in pierce – If love is all made up in your head, is it still love after all?

Fencing made sense for the story because of the character of Zijie’s older brother Zihan, who was hyper-intelligent, enigmatic, and manipulative. Fencing is a lot like chess played with swords, it’s all about strategy and predicting the other person’s moves. It made sense that he would thrive in it, as he would be able to predict what his opponents would do, while also preventing them from guessing what he would do next.

As much as it’s a traditional thriller, it’s also a coming out story.

I didn’t want it to be a coming out story, as Taiwan is very LGBT-friendly (gay marriage is legalized there), and I wanted both local and international audiences to feel that progress. Therefore, the older brother’s reaction when he finds out his younger brother is gay is toned down. Instead, I see the side story between Zijie and Jing Hui as a first love, and more importantly, a chance for Zijie to find some much-needed normalcy (away from the chaos of dealing with his older brother).

What do you plan to work on next?

I am writing my second feature film, Duo, for two years. This will be my American debut, in both English and Cantonese, set in San Francisco in the 1990s. The story revolves around a young and talented Cantonese opera actress who must choose between pursuing her dreams in a dying art form with her idol and mentor, a charismatic older actress who only plays male roles, or making her father proud by becoming his successor at the Chinese-American Bank he founded. It was inspired by the difficult journey of creating a Cantonese opera film. Pierce, and the love and sacrifice that artists make for their art.