Child of Tomorrow 明日之子
2023 – Taiwan – 82 min

Directed by Tsai Chun Pin
Cast | Angel Hsueh Lee, Wu Mu “Fivewood”, Candy Yang, Wang Tzu-Chiang., Huang Shu-mei, Bella Chen, Wang Yun-Chih, Lin Yi-Shan, Lin Shu-Han, Huang Yo-Yu
Screenplay | Tsai Chun Pin
Cinematography | Pan Chien-Ming
Music | Tôn Thất An
Production design | Uno Lin
Producer | Thanos Fan

Premiere at the 26th Taipei Film Festival, 2024
Nominated for Best Actress (Angel Hsueh Lee)
Nominated for Best Television Film, Best Cinematography (Pan Chien-ming), and Most Promising Newcomer (Wu Mu) at the 59th Golden Bell Awards 2024 .

“I want to approach the filming style the way the Dardennes brothers shoot their films. You know, like in rosetta. Something very naturalistic. And I don’t think I will have too much music for this film”
That’s some of the first things Tsai Chun-Pin told me during our first meeting.
It was Xanos Fang who contacted me for this little indie film. I replied that it was perfectly fine for a film not to have much music, or to not have any music at all. If the sound design is well done. And if the actors can give that naturalistic acting he aiming for. I thought to myself that except for a few rare standout cases, that kind of acting was uncommon in Taiwan.
“I only need a couple of pieces.”
So what to do when the director doesn’t want the music to be too musical, not too present and yet, needs it to convey some emotion? I recorded a few pieces that I played to Chun-Pin on our second meeting. He liked them, although he found the music too … musical.
“It will really depend on your actors and your DOP”, I told him. Shooting began shortly afterwards. I attended one night of shooting, talked a little bit with the actors. At home, I would keep on composing. Short pieces with not much music in them, just the essence, a signal of it: echoes of strings and electric guitars, lots of ambient synths. Some would call that ‘soundscape’… When I watched the first cut, what I saw confirmed my initial doubts. Even if the lead actress really gave a lot of herself, the rest of the cast did their usual Taiwanese-style acting. Naturalistic acting is also part of a cultural legacy. In France, it comes from the Nouvelle Vague. In Taiwan, there was indeed a new wave as well with luminaries like Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao Hsien and Tsai Ming Liang, but since then, filmmaking has taken a very different path. As a result, the music feels strangely underwritten, as if too shy to show its true colours. At least, that leaves lots of space for the actress to shine. I shared my impressions with Chun-Pin who agreed: naturalistic style doesn’t really work in Taiwan. They’re not used to it. They don’t understand it.
He was quite happy with the score though. Glad that I insisted in having more music than what he originally intended.