This bare-bones, play-like production is exactly what its title advertises: a reenactment of the trial of Wang Xin-fu (王信福), 70, currently Taiwan’s oldest inmate on death row.
Co-director Chang Chuan-fen (張娟芬) focuses mostly on the judicial details of the case and avoids overly relying on emotional appeal but even from the casting choices and body language of the actors, it’s clear whose side the film is on.
Chang is the chairwoman of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP), and is best-known for spearheading the 2017 exoneration of death row inmate Cheng Hsing-tse (鄭性澤), who was wrongfully
Wang Xin-fu (王信福) is the oldest man on death row in Taiwan and might be executed at any time for a crime in 1990 that he did not commit.
With the case taking place during a period with no presumption of innocence and laws rooted in authoritarian policing, Wang was already a dead man walking when his case was heard in 2006.
Before and during the 1990s, despite the end of martial law imposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the legal and police system was still built around suppression tactics first seen in Taiwan during the White Terror era,