Spotlight on Award-Winning Writer and Director Feng-I Roan

Portrait of Feng-I Roan (credits: @Feng-IRoan)

Taiwanese-American director Feng-I Roan studied abroad at Sciences Po from 2011 to 2012. As time has gone on, she has built an impressive portfolio of films–from shorts to feature-length films–that draw from her own experiences in both the United States and Taiwan and engage with what it is to be a sister, a mother, and a woman.

The filmography of this writer and director has only grown in scale and recognition with her feature-length American Girl, which was just compensated with the Golden Horse prize for Best Cinematography, Best New Performer, Best New Director, as well as the Audience Award and the FIPRESCI prize at this year’s Golden Horse awards ceremony in Taiwan.

She took the time to chat with us about her study-abroad experience at Sciences Po, her career trajectory, and her filmography. Find out more about this extraordinary young director below:

As the award-winning director of American Girl, could you tell us a bit about your professional trajectory and how you arrived at this point in your career?

Like in the film, I spent my elementary years in the States and came back to Taipei with my mom and sister when I was 12. It was in high school that I met a teacher that really changed my life. She was a big cinephile. She loved Truffaut and she showed us many great French films, which made me fall in love with the world.

When I was in high school, I wanted to become a writer. My Dad said, “If you want to be a great writer, you have to see the world.” So I spent a year in Tours, at l’Instute de Touraine, learning French. It really changed me, because it was my first time in Europe. In Asia, when they say “the West”, it actually means the United States or North America; we know very little about Europe. What I got from my first year in France is an appreciation for film, for art, for poetry, and the idea that beauty is very important. This is very different from where I come from and grew up, where practicality is everything and beauty is greatly undervalued.

You were an exchange student at Sciences Po from 2011-2012 while studying literature at the National Taiwan University. What made you want to study at Sciences Po?

I knew that I wanted to go back to France as an exchange student and the National Taiwan University had a program with Sciences Po. Being in the Political Science school was incredible. My classmates were talking about energy, about post democracy, and I felt like an alien but I was also really intrigued by how open they were. What is amazing, is that Sciences Po requires everyone as a student to at least do one exchange before they graduate. I think that’s really a wonderful policy and a hard one to execute, but one from which I greatly benefitted.

I took art classes, cinema classes, and that was very satisfying for me. Just walking down Saint-Germain-des-Près all the time was a great luxury. And to be in such a great school—one of the top schools—it was fun for me to see my classmates bringing briefcases to school and being very serious about the world’s problems. I was meeting people from all over the world in Paris and it was very enriching.

Your work engages with your experiences in both Taiwan and the United States. Did living in Paris change the way you view these two cultures?

Completely. I think it made me aware of how big the world is. It made me aware of how funny the question “What do you think about the West and the East?” is, because it is so vague. So many things are in between. To say that “the West” is America and “the East” is eastern Asia ignores too many interesting parts of the world. Being in Paris really decentralised my world and helped me keep an openness in mind, that there are many things that I do not know about the world; that it does not consist of just two strong powers and cultures, but that it is made of a lot of fun cultures that we have to make an effort to open our eyes and look at.

I think that what’s special about Paris is how easy it is to feel like you’re close to Middle Eastern art or cinema or African art and cinema, which, being in Taiwan, feels very far away, because Taiwan is very heavily influenced by Japan because of its colonized history. We don’t know much about Africa or the Middle East; it just feels so far away from us. Being in France exposed me to a part of the world that for me would have otherwise been blank.

Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Try to keep your mind and eyes open, to live your life to the fullest. Don’t be so concerned about creating things. I think it’s about seeing things for the way they are, which is seeing things according to your world. Travel, read, and if you can’t travel, spend time with yourself and look deeper into your relationships around you. Think about why you want to be a filmmakers and try to put down your ego as much as possible. The more you can put it down, the greater the creator you’ll become.

What’s next for the coming year? Do you already have a new project in mind?

For 2022, I would love to travel more, but because of the COVID situation, I think I will have to stay put and just read and write—just take some time off and learn new things and spend some time as a family, because films take a lot of time away from them.

I think we’re always toying with a couple projects. I want to try my hand at comedy next time, because I think that we have a lot of great, serious filmmakers already. I’m going to try to have some fun and bring some laughter to the world. I think that many great writers would agree that comedy is the highest form of drama, so I want to challenge myself and bring some happiness to the world.

The Sciences Po Editorial Team