Last fall, artists across the country created the Fall of Freedom, activating a nationwide wave of creative resistance to rising authoritarianism.

From galleries and libraries to theaters, schools, and street corners, hundreds of events unfolded across forty‑seven states.

The urgency has only intensified so we are presenting another set of acts of creative resistance on May Day.

This Friday, May 1, artists, musicians, actors, comedians, dancers, and filmmakers will present their work and gather audiences in a communal declaration that TRUTH MATTERS, ART MATTERS AND COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS!

As part of the Fall of Freedom film community, I want to share that we’re presenting over 20 screenings this May Day!

Award-winning filmmakers who tackle some of the critical issues facing us today will screen films like the documentary Steal This Story, Please! about fearless journalist Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, who I’ve interviewed for this podcast if you want to hear more.

Homegrown, directed by Michael Premo with story consulting by Lynn Nottage—the first and still the only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice—the documentary Homegrown looks at the rise of right‑wing extremism in America.

Lynn is, by the way, one of the organizers and initiators of Fall of Freedom along with visual artist Dread Scott. Lynn Nottage’s husband, filmmaker Tony Gerber, has been lead organizer of our film community along with filmmaker Jed Rothstein, and a huge thank you and deep gratitude to all of them.

This May Day, there will also be a screening of Soul Patrol, written and directed by J.M. Harper, the Sundance Directing Prize–winning film about an elite unit of African American special‑ops soldiers in Vietnam.

Chelsea Winstanley’s directorial feature film debut, TOITŪ: Visual Sovereignty, is screening with Fall of Freedom and the LAAPFF—LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. Chelsea’s is a documentary film that follows Māori curator Nigel Borell as his groundbreaking exhibition becomes both a cultural triumph and a battleground over Indigenous self‑determination inside a powerful colonial art institution. And our documentary Invisible Nation, about Taiwan’s struggle for democracy, comes out on PBS starting this May Day.

We’ll also present Fall of Freedom: Labor of Love, a labor‑themed shorts program screening in several venues, and Damned in the U.S.A, A Fight for First Amendment Rights, screening alongside a very special panel with legendary First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus at Theatre Row in New York City.

You can find details on these screenings and more, along with hundreds of other Fall of Freedom May Day events, at www.falloffreedom.com.

Thank you for participating and joining!

In this Earth Day edition of vHopeful Conversations, Vanessa sits down with producer Fisher Stevens and co-director Chelsea Greene to discuss We Are Guardians, their urgent and deeply human documentary about Indigenous forest defenders on the frontlines of the Amazon. Chelsea traces the film’s origins to the 2019 Amazon fires and her decision to drop everything to document communities risking their lives to confront illegal loggers, while Fisher reflects on joining the project, helping shape its verité approach, and supporting a multi-year impact campaign grounded in accountability to those same communities. Together they explore how the film braids intimate character stories with Brazilian electoral politics, the economic drivers of deforestation, and the outsized influence of agribusiness giants like Cargill and JBS, all while arguing that “action is the antidote to despair” and inviting listeners to see themselves as guardians too.

Transcript lightly edited. Podcast available on Dream of a Better World, and Apple or wherever you listen

Vanessa Hope: I’m very excited to be joined today, which is Earth Day. It’s Earth Week. It’s Earth Month. We hope everyone cares about the Earth all the time, but we’re putting a laser focus on a fantastic documentary called We Are Guardians, produced by Fisher Stevens, who’s here with us, and co-directed by Chelsea Greene.

Fisher Stevens, as you all know, is an Academy Award–winning producer, director, actor, and writer whose work spans fiction and documentary, including producing the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, directing landmark climate films such as Mission Blue with Sylvia Earle on Netflix, Before the Flood, and series like Beckham.

Chelsea Greene is a documentary filmmaker and co-director of We Are Guardians, whose work centers on wildlife, Indigenous guardianship, and environmental justice, drawing on years of immersive storytelling in the Amazon and award-winning projects like Borneo’s Vanishing Tribes. Thank you both for being here.

Fisher Stevens: Thanks for having us, Vanessa. Glad to be here on Earth Day, Earth Week, Earth Year, and Earth—just be on Earth, period.

Vanessa: Exactly. Chelsea, so we don’t leave them out, can you tell us who your co-directors are on this excellent film, We Are Guardians?

Chelsea Greene: Of course, yeah. I co-directed the film with Rob Grobman and Edivan Guajajara. And Edivan is an Indigenous filmmaker from one of the communities that the film focuses on. He’s also one of the co-founders of Mídia Indígena, which, if you don’t know about them, I recommend you give them a follow on social media. They’re an Indigenous-led journalistic organization bringing stories from the front lines of the Amazon, and they’re amazing. So I was so happy to co-direct the film with them.

Vanessa: And for listeners who haven’t seen We Are Guardians yet, how do you each describe the film and the story you set out to tell in the Amazon?

Chelsea: We Are Guardians tells the story of the people who are putting their bodies in the way of those who are trying to destroy the forest. There are multiple characters involved, and they’re from different perspectives. There’s also the perspective of the illegal loggers who are invading Indigenous territories to cut down trees to make a living. The whole film follows these characters closely—people who live and die by the forest—telling the overall story of what’s happening in the Amazon, why it’s important, and what we can do about it.

Fisher: Chelsea and the other directors also end up getting into Brasília, the capital, where the elections are being held, where Bolsonaro is running against Lula. They break down the difference between the two candidates and how the election would affect the rainforest, in terms of the environmental damage that would have happened if Bolsonaro had won again—if he’d continued to be president.

Vanessa: It’s a very multi-layered story. You tell it incredibly well. I wonder what the first spark was for the project and how each of you got involved.

Chelsea: Well, the first spark for me was seeing the images of the Amazon burning. I was just so shocked when I saw that the day had turned to night in São Paulo in 2019, that there were such massive fires. I mean, it was the year that Australia was burning really badly—there were so many fires out of control, and climate change was just feeling so real to me at that time. I thought, how is humanity purposely setting the Amazon rainforest of all places on fire—one of the most important carbon sinks and climate regulators on the planet—setting it on fire for something so silly as slash-and-burn agriculture, which doesn’t even make sense, which we can get into later.

I just felt the injustice of that. Having worked on a documentary in Borneo and seeing Indigenous peoples’ fight against palm oil companies, and how important tropical forests are, and how Brazil had been a leader in reducing tropical deforestation before that—they had shown the world that it’s possible—and then they undid all of that progress to set it on fire.

So that’s why I went down to Brazil and started filming. I just dropped everything that was going on in my life to start capturing whatever story I could. I didn’t really know what was going to happen, nor had I ever been to Brazil before. I just fell in love with the people and the culture and the Amazon on that first trip.

And then, when we came back and started talking with Fisher, that was another spark for me, because I’m such a fan of Fisher’s work. His films had inspired me to get into documentary filmmaking and go to film school. So I was just honored to be able to work with him and thrilled that he wanted to jump on.

Vanessa: And Fisher, they brought it to you, this project?

Fisher: I mean, it came to me through a friend of theirs, Bruce Cohen, who is an Oscar-winning producer but had never made a documentary and didn’t really know this world. So he gave it to me. There were two other people Bruce was working with, helping them—Zack Kilburg and Maura Anderson.

They sent me this trailer. I’d never met any of these people except Bruce. The trailer kind of blew my mind, but it wasn’t quite there. I was like, well, if I’m going to work with these people, I want to sort of test them. And if we’re going to raise money, I think the trailer needs to be a little better—even though it was good.

I gave them some notes. They re-sent me a cut of the trailer and it blew my mind. I was like, holy shit. A) They’re brilliant. And B) they take direction—or at least agree with me a little bit. So I was all in.

I took that trailer and helped them raise funds with Zack and Maura. And Marco Krapels, who became our executive producer—and had worked with me and Leo DiCaprio on Before the Flood—got involved and helped us raise money. Then we were off to the races.

These three directors are in the middle of the rainforest, risking their lives, next thing you know. There were moments where they were deep in the forest where I think all of us—I was in New York at the time, in Brooklyn—had to advise them to kind of step down for a second because they were getting death threats. They were really pushing it, in a great way but a dangerous way. I just admired them.

And, you know, it took a long time. Their commitment is—as you can tell—Chelsea is still very involved. What I love about these guys, Chelsea and Rob and Edivan, is they’re committed to the cause. This isn’t a career stepping stone for them; this is a life choice they’ve made to help save the Amazon.

It’s a long way around of saying that it’s been a beautiful experience, but it wasn’t easy. And these guys, they evolved. They’re seriously warriors themselves.

Vanessa: Maybe we should talk a little now about the fact that you have been on the road with this film since its release in 2023, right? We’ve had a similar experience with the level of commitment to the subject and passion for getting the word out. I wonder how you all approach this.

For Ted, it’s called “slow distribution.” He thinks it’s the only way to really generate real conversation and impact around a film—keep it out there. So it’s important that it’s not just Earth Day that we get everyone to watch it, but that people pay attention in general. Can you speak to this question of getting the film out there and continuing to generate interest now?

Chelsea: Well, yeah, I mean, I’m curious to hear Fisher’s experience too, because as I’ve understood it, the industry has really changed, and it’s not as easy to get distribution as it used to be for a documentary. And I assume even more so since we called out some of the biggest companies and banks in the world, and how interconnected our corporate and banking systems are with maybe these very streaming platforms.

We had a commitment to the communities. Many filmmakers and journalists go to the communities and extract a story somewhat colonially and don’t return on any of their promises. We were just dedicated. We really wanted to help. Like I said, the whole reason we went to Brazil and started filming was just to help—to try to do something, because it’s so urgent.

When we were with the communities, they clearly needed help with their guardianship programs. They wanted to reforest huge areas that had burned, and they wanted to create a bioeconomy—something they could sell with the forest standing, to make an income to keep these projects going. We said that we would try to help.

So, since the film premiered at Hot Docs, we set up a website, started collecting donations. Edivan and Puyr have been advising us the whole time on what their communities need and the projects they want to do. We’ve done tons of trainings. We’ve done screenings and impact events all over the world. We’ve been able to show it in the U.S. Congress and the Brazilian Congress, at the United Nations—really just taking every opportunity and offer that we could.

Thanks to the help of all the amazing, roughly hundred partners that we worked with throughout all of the screenings and events, we’ve been able to raise a million dollars for distribution of the film and for bringing supplies to the communities. They’ve done such a good job. There’s a group of women in Edivan’s community that have planted over 100,000 trees now, and they’re not stopping anytime soon. In Puyr’s territories, they’re amping up their reforestation project too.

I never thought I’d take such a turn from filmmaking into founding a nonprofit—and basically what we’ve been able to achieve—but it’s been so rewarding, and difficult. I’ve learned so many new things. But I think it’s really true: when it comes to an impact documentary, you have to stay dedicated.

It’s been two years we’ve been at this, and we wouldn’t have been able to achieve any of the things we have if we had just put it up on streaming and been like, “OK, we’re done,” or even just collected some donations and sent them down there. We were very active.

Vanessa: Exactly. Do you feel that having a co-director who’s Brazilian made a difference in the impact in Brazil—in screening in the Brazilian Congress—and in how you looked at authorship and, as you said, not being extractive or colonial about it in the storytelling?

Chelsea: Absolutely. Him being an Indigenous co-director brought most of the ability for us to achieve so much impact and recognition, because really, Indigenous people want to and need to be telling their own stories. We really let him lead so many parts of the creation of the film and the impact campaign.

And Puyr Tembé—you know, we brought Marçal to a couple of the screenings and events. And Puyr is such a powerful speaker and leader. Some of our bigger donors were just enamored and just wanted to bring her, because she’s so amazing and so well-spoken. Most of the success of the impact campaign is attributed to them, and their beauty and stage presence a lot of times. Their commitment is just inspiring as well. They are also incredibly brave, and they face serious threats every day as well, especially Marçal and Edivan.

Fisher: To me, the real inspiration has been watching everybody stick with it. After Before the Flood, we tried, and we stuck with it a bit, but that movie is so depressing to watch right now, because we were like, everything that we dreaded is kind of happening—and happening even faster than 2030, when we thought the real problems would really start. They started, you know.

So it’s nice to have a little bit of positivity and inspiration in the environmental space with what’s going on and what these people have accomplished.

Vanessa: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting in the film how you also include the perspective of an illegal logger. You give us an understanding of what’s driving this illegal trade—that it’s survival—and how difficult it is to enforce environmental law. Was it challenging to get that perspective into the story? How did you go about it? And has it helped people understand how to make a difference?

Chelsea: Well, yeah. At the core of the story, we wanted people to understand that the people who are destroying the forests are ultimately, as Valdir would say, just the peons, the pawns of these big companies. They make no money. They’re slaves to this system that really keeps the Amazon biome poor on purpose.

The extractive industries are in charge—logging, ranching, mining, and now even in some places, oil extraction is ramping up. A few elites are controlling these industries and expanding the deforestation frontier to create corrupt municipalities.

I think the story of Tadeu—we don’t talk about him very much—but he’s got this huge land where they built a municipality, built on corruption, where the money from the sawmills goes to the mayor. That just expands over and over across the frontier.

But yeah, it was somewhat difficult to find Valdir. This was one of the amazing, beautiful synchronicities of making this film. We set out from the beginning to show this perspective, because extreme polarization is one of the problems. Most Brazilians agree they want to protect the Amazon, but the political right and left have them convinced in different directions about what’s real and what’s not, and what’s actually happening.

We wanted to show that perspective and we wanted it to come to light. So we set out into the middle of nowhere to find Valdir, on these logging roads. We had a liaison who had worked with the loggers in the past and had turned into an environmentalist and wanted to help. He was scared. He was like, “These guys are armed. They don’t want to be found.”

But we just kept pushing a bit further, and we found him right as the sun was about to go down, on the second day of driving through these little roads, destroying our rental car with vines. He was there. We got out, the sun was going down, and we said, “Can we get an interview with you? We just want to tell your perspective—what do you feel, what’s going on with the Amazon?”

He said yes. He invited us back to his camp, and we spent some really good times together, actually. It was heart-wrenching to watch him cut all the trees down—we watched so many of them. Then we came back six months later and we were able to find him again in the middle of the forest with no phone. That was one of the magics of this production.

We set out into this tangled web of logging roads once again, thinking, “I don’t know where he’s going to be.” But he had a premonition that we were coming back, and the day before, he sent someone to wait by the roadside to find us and show us where their new logging camp was. That really showed us: keep going, don’t give up.

Even he stood by our side when we got death threats. He really wanted to protect us in that situation.

The film came out on Netflix (in Latin America) and, I’m not sure how related it was, but not much later—like a week or so—there was a military and police operation to remove all the loggers from that territory. Valdir managed to get out just in time, and he was safe at home. He’s now stopped logging. We’ve been supporting him with some things, and he’s pretty much in retirement, spending more time with his family

Fisher: and his monkey. So, that’s a good monkey.

Vanessa: Fisher, I imagine you were a huge help in the edit, trying to figure out how to weave together all these elements. As you said, there’s the Lula–Bolsonaro angle politically, there’s some history and economics and science, and then these intimate character portraits, plus these big shots of the Amazon and the horrible scenes of trees being cut and falling. Did you help in the edit and the structuring and the storytelling?

Fisher: I mean, I hope I did. We tried. These guys shot a lot of footage, I have to say. It was definitely the jigsaw puzzle, Vanessa, that you’re used to doing as well.

They’re all difficult, right? It’s finding the balance between the mappers and the scientists and Puyr and Valdir. Finding that balance was not easy, I would say.

And also, to be honest, I was probably more helpful with just helping them figure out what to film. These guys could have kept shooting many things. Eventually, once you feel like you understand where the story’s going, it’s about focusing the filmmakers on that so they don’t get too sidetracked. Also, we had very limited funds, so you want to use those funds wisely.

We brought in a couple of really helpful people in the edit. You know how it is, Vanessa—you start with, “Oh, this editor is going to save us.” And then, we’re not going to mention names, but they help, and then they’re not the savior that you thought. So you have to keep going back and finding other people who are inspired or come with ideas or carry out the vision of Chelsea and Edivan and Rob—and, basically, Zack and I also trying to guide them.

You need a lot of cooks with this, because it was made on a pretty thin shoestring, considering they’re in Brazil and had to fly back and forth. I mean, Chelsea, of course, had to fly first class and had the M&M red-only rider in her trailer and all that. She was a real prima donna.

Chelsea: (laughs)

Fisher: No, I’m kidding. They were amazing. They would fly on the floor of the airplane if they needed to.

Chelsea: We slept in hammocks a lot—with the jaguars.

Vanessa: What?

Chelsea: There were jaguars circling our camp as we were sleeping in hammocks, like little human sushi.

Vanessa: That was where I was going next—what did it look like to shoot in the forest? How long would you stay, how much gear did you need, how big was your crew, and what were your safety concerns?

Chelsea: Well, in the previous question too—Fisher, you’ve got to take credit for your idea to shoot more verité. We were less experienced in that type of filmmaking, and we’re so grateful for that input. It really made it sing. We had a director—he was really like a professor of dramaturgy, and that’s what he does now. We learned so much about verité filmmaking and it was such a pleasure.

Fisher: At the beginning it was very much like an environmental movie you’d expect, where you sit people down and interview them. Very little of that exists in the film now because it became more about capturing real life. Some of the voiceover from those interviews is in there, which is great, and then you get them in action. That’s where they’re actually being more real and telling us more information we want to hear, and being more authentic to what an audience—like Vanessa and I—wants to see, to be honest. And people in Rio, São Paulo—city folk, you know.

I like that you get more information from the film just by observing their lives rather than someone telling you information. That was one thing we were able to achieve.

Chelsea: So, in terms of going and filming, we usually split up. We had Edivan with a different crew—a cinematographer and a field producer—up in Indigenous territory a lot. Rob and I would be on a separate unit down in Rondônia, where the loggers and Tadeu were.

It was really difficult to find the right people sometimes to come on these missions with us. Imagine asking someone, “Hey, will you come be our translator and field producer?” We didn’t know Portuguese at first, but we learned throughout the process. We always needed a translator, just to make sure we really understood everything. And Brazilians trust Brazilians more a lot of the time in production.

Finding the people to fill this role—thank God we found the right people. But imagine asking someone, “Hey, do you want to come into the middle of the Amazon, drive for days in a car to find people who are armed and dangerous, and try to film them? And we can’t pay you that much.”

There’s a great story of this one woman we hired. I told her all of this up front on the phone—I was very frank: this is exactly what we’re doing, and this is what could happen. I wasn’t sugarcoating it. She said, “Yes, I’m in. Let’s go.”

Then we’re on a mission on a boat—we went on like twelve missions with the Guardians filming—and we get off onto land and there’s an invader hiding in the bushes who holds the people in line at gunpoint. She freaked out, went back to the boat, and wouldn’t help us, even though we still needed to film more. The gunman fled, but we were still going to go and check out this logging camp. She was terrified and refused to do anything else. I think I learned more Portuguese that day than I did the entire rest of the production.

Usually, it was just me and Rob on camera, someone with a boom if we were lucky. A lot of times the audio is just captured from a shotgun mic on the camera, plus a translator/field producer. And Edivan has the advantage of speaking Tupi. So when we were filming with certain Indigenous peoples, we would have him translating and really being the producer/director.

Vanessa: Amazing. So Fisher, let’s talk about how to save the environment with this film and The Cove, the other films you’ve directed—Mission Blue, Before the Flood. How can these films make a difference? How many more of these films do we need to keep making to get people to pay attention?

Fisher: Well, I don’t know. To be honest, I got a bit discouraged. I also made the first documentary on Trump after he was president, Trump: An American Dream on Netflix, thinking, “Wow, if people see this film, if he does run again, there’s no way you could possibly vote for this madman.” And… nothing.

When he was elected again—look, I know it’s not just him. I don’t say Trump is our problem, because he’s not. He’s one of them. There are many other issues.

Vanessa: Do people learn from what they watch?

Fisher: They learn from what they watch. The youth movement—the kids—are so much more aware of the environment, and they care. My kids do, and they’re only 10 and 12. I think that’s the hope.

But I have to say, the filmmaking—Chelsea and I have been discussing another project we’re circling, about the effects that war has on the environment. When you see what’s going on in Iran, Gaza and Israel, Ukraine and Russia, and you see these bombs going off—the destruction, the chemicals in the air, then in the sea with oil, with Venezuela—the environmental degradation we’re talking about is happening now, every day we are at war.

So then I’m going, people have to know that too. It’s not just that people are dying, which is horrible; what’s going on everywhere is so unbelievable. But people are going to die as a result of what’s going up in the air. Think about 9/11 and all these people that are now getting sick and have been getting sick. Well, this 9/11 stuff is going on all over the world every day.

We’re trying to figure out a film to make people aware of that. But I don’t know. I’m about to make a movie about Vogue magazine because I’m just so depressed about it all, you know.

Vanessa: It’s good to have a lighter subject.

Fisher: Although you can get into it. I mean, look—I’m going to continue to think about it. Every day I send an article to my assistant going, “Let’s look into this. Let’s look into that.” I would say it’s important that we make these movies so people get inspired. But we have these people now running the world, as Pope Leo says, that don’t care. They don’t care about humans, and they don’t care about the planet.

I have to say, I was really disappointed in these astronauts on Artemis. Not one of them, at least that I heard, spoke about—well, they all spoke about the beautiful majesty of the Earth and how beautiful it is—but I didn’t hear any of them say, “We’ve got to stop destroying her. We have to take care of this beautiful blue ball.” I didn’t hear any of that. And that is not political. Why are we making it political?

It just—it just makes me so upset. But, you know, we’re not stopping. Chelsea and I talk about this thing, and it’s not going to stop us, but it does make you really sad, you know? It’s why so many environmental scientists are the most depressing human beings on Earth.

Vanessa: Because they know what’s coming and what’s happening. I mean, I think it’s the work. We just have to keep putting these films out and keep talking about them and trying to make a difference, like you’re doing.

Chelsea, when you would screen for the Congress in Brazil, or here, or at the U.N., what are you learning that you can share with us about what we can do to make a difference? With the Amazon teetering on the edge, how do we better take care of the Amazon and our planet?

Chelsea: Ultimately, the political situation in Brazil changed. There’s a new president, and they were able to bring in some incredible women leaders—Indigenous women leaders. We’ve seen them demarcate more Indigenous territories and really refund all the programs that were helping reduce deforestation.

But I think we need to remember that these corporations are still lobbying the government and ultimately changing the way that laws are formed. It’s going to be a constant battle as long as we have corporations able to influence politics. We need to get campaign finance laws reformed. We need to get money out of politics from big corporations. There’s no other way to help this. The money is what’s in charge right now.

Cargill is the largest privately owned agricultural company on Earth, and they’re based in Minnesota. They control so much of the U.S. food system. They’re the largest producer of eggs for McDonald’s; those chickens are fed by Cargill soy that comes out of illegal deforestation in the Amazon. They’re influencing the government in the U.S., the government in Brazil, eroding—just like JBS (a Brazilian multinational meatpacking and food-processing company, and the largest meat processing enterprise in the world)—our climate change legislation.

There are many companies doing this. As consumers, the number one thing we can do is speak out about it. Obviously, boycott. But beyond that, companies like JBS and Cargill—almost no one’s heard of them, but they’re providing meat and chicken and all these products to companies like Kroger, Costco, Walmart. So as a consumer, as much as possible, buying local is one thing you can really do.

Fisher: Cargill is a corporation—I’ve tried to interview them. They’re in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are 16 members of the Cargill family that are billionaires. Sixteen members of one family in America. I’m not saying every one of them is personally responsible, but what they’re doing to the planet—this family, the Cargill family, and their relatives—it’s monstrous. They’re monstrous. They’re the ones getting rich, not the people destroying, not the poor people cutting down the trees, not the people digging up the forest, not the people cutting their limbs off by mistake to flatten the forest for their soy farms. The Cargill family.

I would love to do a movie about that family. I don’t know—who’s going to watch it? That’s the other part, Vanessa. Humping this movie has been really interesting for three years. It’s just been about getting these things out.

Oh my God. It’s just—it’s amazing that we’re here right now.

Vanessa: You’re so good. You’re so good for speaking truth to power. You’re so good for putting the facts out there and the reality on the ground that we otherwise have no way to see. I’ve never seen an environmental documentary like this. It was completely unique and extremely powerful and very beautifully made—really well told.

These giant multinational corporations now have more money and power than many governments, many countries, all of us people. What more can we do to fight back? Do we want to encourage everyone to make more of these films? What can we do?

Fisher: I think campaigns are good. Mark Ruffalo and I have been kind of celebrity wranglers—and Leo—for the environment, but it’s exhausting. Even on this, Chelsea keeps calling me, “Get your friend…” It’s hard. People don’t want to do it.

But I would say getting awareness—it’s like this Cargill thing has haunted me, because there have been campaigns against them, but they don’t have any traction. There’s no traction. Even in Before the Flood we called out Cargill back then.

I think it’s really going to come down to taking social media and figuring out a way to use it in a positive way to influence saving the planet. Short films, or—I don’t know. That’s another thing we need: to try to do a podcast about figuring out the next way to do this. Doing a movie is great, but they take a lot of money, a lot of time, and we need these corporations to distribute them.

But if we can figure out a way to do short content and blast it out there and make it have impact—that’s what I think we need to do.

Vanessa: Yep. All right, well, I’ll take that advice, and I’ll try my best to do a podcast on that subject. Thank you so much, Fisher. I really appreciate it. And Chelsea, do you have any last words or thoughts?

Chelsea: Yeah, thanks, Fisher. I think it’s so true: we have to change the culture. Right now, a lot of people care about the environment, but we’re so disconnected from nature. In the last 50 years, something like 60% of people don’t have as much connection with nature as they used to.

We have to make it so unbelievably cool and sexy—like, more than the Kardashians, for example—that we are not supporting big corporations; we are supporting local communities to protect the environment. I think together we can make that happen as a cultural shift. That’s what we need to do.

We need to do everything we can to break their power down. We need to change the government structures so they cannot get away with literal murder. I think we all need to remember our power in that. There’s a lot more of us than there are of them, and we need to dedicate ourselves to it.

I think one of your questions was, how did you manage the sadness of what you were covering in this film? I’d say the quote “Action is the antidote to despair” kept coming through for me, because I was working on it. I was doing something about it. That’s so true.

I felt a lot of joy through the process just knowing that I was at least doing my part. I was doing something—and everybody can do that. Everybody can really work on this and use their creativity. There are so many ways to take this on, and you’re going to need to look deeply to connect with your way to be a guardian and do your part and make a difference. That we can do it.

Vanessa: Beautifully said. Thank you both so much.

Executive producers of We Are Guardians include tribal members of the Guajajara people and Mídia Indígena founders Erisvan Bone Guajajara, Flay Guajajara, and co-director Edivan Guajajara. Leonardo DiCaprio, Oscar-winning actor, producer and activist, serves as executive producer with Jennifer Davisson and Phillip Watson of Appian Way, in addition to Christopher Gebhardt and Randy Gebhardt of Random Good, Bruce Cohen, Rob Grobman, Iz Web, Luiza Krapels, and Marco Krapels. Co-executive producers are Conscious Good, Michael Grimm, Brigit Grimm, Heather Conforto Beatty and Scott Beatty.

FISHER STEVENS | PRODUCER

FISHER STEVENS has been in the entertainment business for almost 40 years. His versatility in the industry is evident from his wide range of credits, from acting to directing to producing, from feature film to documentary, and from television to theater. Stevens is a prominent voice in climate storytelling. He produced the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” exposing marine wildlife exploitation, and directed “Before the Flood,” which follows global efforts to address climate change. As well as producing “We Are Guardians,” which raises awareness of efforts to protect the Brazilian rainforest. Through his documentaries, Stevens has helped raise awareness of environmental issues, from ocean conservation to global warming.

Fisher’s company Highly Flammable

Oscar-winning and Emmy-winning, multi-hyphenate Fisher Stevens, the producer behind award-winning documentaries THE COVE and TIGER KING, and director of 2023 smash hit BECKHAM (Netflix) and the acclaimed features PALMER (Apple) and BEFORE THE FLOOD (NatGeo), joined forces with producer Zak Kilberg and producer/director Maura Anderson to form Highly Flammable, a production company with groundbreaking content as explosive as its name. Anderson is an Emmy nominated producer, who has produced documentary series for Netflix, FX, HBO, and Obama’s Higher Ground. She recently co-directed feature documentary KICKBACK about FIFA corruption, and she is in production and development on several feature documentaries as both director and producer.  Kilberg’s projects, which include Golden Globe-winner The Mauritanian and International Emmy-winner Bellingcat, have been acquired by top distributors worldwide, including Universal, Lionsgate, Netflix, HBO, Showtime, IFC, Amazon Studios, STX, etc., as well as boasting laurels from Sundance, Berlin, SXSW, Hotdocs, IDFA and BAFTA. Brought together by the shared goal of delivering world class, critically acclaimed and commercial content to global audiences, the Highly Flammable creative team also share the desire to make a positive impact on our world through their art.

CHELSEA GREENE | DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, CINEMATOGRAPHER, EDITOR

Chelsea Greene is a documentary filmmaker, impact producer, and multidisciplinary visual artist whose work explores the intersection of environmental justice, Indigenous leadership, and wildlife conservation. Raised in the forests of Vermont, Chelsea has spent over 15 years traveling the globe working on documentaries, television series, and short-form content, as well as creating photography, graphic design, and visual art that amplifies stories from the frontlines of ecological and cultural resilience.

Her cinematography and editing work has been featured on platforms including Netflix, PBS, NBC, and Nat Geo WILD, bringing global attention to urgent issues. Early in her career, she contributed to the award-winning documentary Borneo’s Vanishing Tribes, which spotlighted the Dayak people’s resistance to palm oil-driven deforestation in Southeast Asia.

Chelsea made her feature directorial debut with We Are Guardians, a film that follows Indigenous forest defenders in the Brazilian Amazon. The project represents a milestone in her career—blending immersive storytelling with a bold impact campaign focused on forest protection, Indigenous rights, and climate action.

In recent years, Chelsea has stepped into the role of impact producer, driven by a desire to crack the code of how films can not only inform but inspire and mobilize real-world change. Whether behind the camera, in the editing suite, or building campaigns, her work is rooted in a deep belief in the power of storytelling to heal, connect, and transform.

Watch We Are Guardians this week for its April 22 Earth Day global streaming release, now available on Tubi, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, YouTube, and Vimeo On Demand!

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In 1977, under Brazil’s dictatorship, a widowed dissident flees a corrupt official and returns to Recife during Carnival to reunite with his son. Hunted by two assassins and aided by a benefactor, he discovers his hometown is far deadlier than he ever imagined.

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In this conversation, actress, writer, and director Julie Delpy talks about her latest film Les Barbares (Meet the Barbarians), a sharp comedy about a Syrian refugee family resettled in a small village in Brittany. She unpacks how the film uses humor to confront racism, fear‑mongering, and the “great replacement” narrative, while highlighting everyday desires—love, work, family—that make refugees recognizably human.

Delpy reflects on balancing comedy with real grief and outrage, her own visit to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, and the political backlash the film has drawn from the far right. She also discusses directing herself, working with her father, her resistance to fake Hollywood romance, and why love, solidarity, and a sense of hope are essential tools against rising authoritarianism.

transcript edited lightly for clarity and brevity

Vanessa Hope: I’m very excited to be joined by actress, writer, director Julie Delpy. I think American audiences know you best from the Richard Linklater series Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (and Before Midnight) with Ethan Hawke. They may not know that your career began working with some of the world’s best directors. In France—Godard (Detective). The Three Colors trilogy, Kieślowski ’s films. Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa).

But Americans, alas, are missing out on the fact that the film we’re about to discuss, which is called Meet the Barbarians in English—you can give us the French, Les Barbares—is scheduled to screen at the New York Comedy Film Festival on Thursday, February 19th at 7pm — (we’ll encourage everyone to go to this screening. I think this film deserves many more screenings, and I feel so fortunate that Ted and I could see it in a theater) — but this is your eighth film as a director!

I’ve seen Two Days in Paris and Two Days in New York, and they’re incredibly smart, funny, and worth seeing. I think it’s time for a retrospective of all the films you’ve directed.

And this film is so good and so timely, Meet the Barbarians.

Julie, can you tell us what it’s about?

Julie Delpy: Yes, it’s a comedy, but I wanted to make a comedy about a very serious subject: refugees, people who unfortunately have to flee their country because of war, conflict, or unrest. They leave by force and end up in a country that is not always welcoming. I take a microcosm—a tiny village in Brittany, in France.

Some people are welcoming, and some people are angry that the refugees are there. So it’s a simple story, but I wanted to tell the story of who we are today, and our capacity to be empathetic with others’ suffering—or not. In the film, there are a couple of characters who don’t really care. And it’s also about how people get manipulated or pulled one way or the other. I would say half the people in the village don’t really care, and then slowly it unwinds.

It’s really about this family of Syrian refugees who end up in this little Brittany village.

Vanessa: Yes. One summer when I was 16, I stayed with a family in France and I was placed in Nantes.

Julie: Nantes is not far from Brittany. It’s right at the limit. Some people would consider it Brittany, but it’s right on the edge.

Vanessa: Oh, that’s interesting.

Julie: You know all the films Jacques Demy made—he was from Nantes—so there were a lot of Jacques Demy films set there. Lola was shot in Nantes. It’s all that region of his early films and stuff, which I love so.

Vanessa: The region, the small town that you choose, is really well depicted and it feels like a character in the film, even though that’s a cliché to say.

Julie: I was raised in Paris, but my family is from Brittany and my aunt lived there. She was a nurse and a very kind woman. My cousin is a schoolteacher and works with refugee organizations. So it’s partly inspired by some people in my family and true stories that happened in different places in France and Europe. Part of my family still lives in the region—everyone except my dad, basically.

Vanessa: Was there a particular idea that came to you first? Was it the emotional pull of the refugee story, or the very funny comedic twist in the story?

Julie: What happened is that it started in the middle of the refugee crisis—around 2014–2016. When I started writing, my co-writer and I were in that moment. They had done a tremendous amount of work, basically like journalists, going around and interviewing refugees. It all started with seeing people dead, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. It was shocking to see that, the bureaucracy, the lack of empathy, people stuck at borders, dying in the cold in Poland or wherever it was. It was really hard to witness all of this.

And of course the usual suspects were pushing the narrative that “they’re coming in to kill people”—we know that narrative. But they were families with children trying to survive. It felt very shocking to me, so my first feeling for this story was outrage.

And that outrage became even clearer when the war between Russia and Ukraine started. Suddenly a lot of countries that had pushed away refugees from Syria or Afghanistan opened their doors to Ukrainians—which is great, they opened their doors—but it was also a clear sign of racism to me. My co-writers and I decided to include that in the film.

The film starts with everyone expecting Ukrainians, everyone’s super happy, and then boom: no more Ukrainians. And here we are with Syrians which — to racist people — is very, very different. It’s a double standard of empathy: you have more empathy for someone who’s blonde with blue eyes.

It’s interesting—I talked to a lot of teachers who had welcomed Syrian kids. One teacher told me it was very shocking for them when the Ukrainians arrived, because suddenly they had to make a whole presentation about the war and their suffering, and the Syrians were like, “But we went through it too, and no one talked about it. There wasn’t this big deal about us.” That teacher explained how he thought the film was very accurate on that level—that not every refugee is treated the same.

Vanessa: It’s horrific that we’re so ill-informed in the United States. I think you’re right: it does have to do with racism, and it’s our worst behavior that we can’t embrace and allow refugees, and that politicians manipulate the subject.

Julie: Well, it’s always been the shtick of the far right: foreigners. In France, it’s definitely Muslims. The hatred is really out of control.

In the U.S. it’s a mix, a mix of hatred, but the narrative is the same: scare people. It’s interesting because it’s never in big cities where everyone is mixed together and living together that they gain power. It’s in small towns where they tell people, “They’re going to come, they’re going to rape your children, they’re going to turn your church into a mosque.” In France they say, “They’re going to turn all the churches into mosques.” I’m like, no, it’s not going to happen. It’s that “great replacement” narrative. The French far right sort of started it; it’s been feeding far‑right movements everywhere.

I get angry because it’s so obvious, but people still fall into it. I just wanted to make a film about that.

The film did well and sold in many countries. It came out and did really well in Germany. Now it’s coming out in Spain this summer and people really love it, which is great. But in the U.S., I haven’t found a distributor yet, and it’s not surprising. Everyone is kneeling to power. I think people are scared to have a film that, in its own way, is very provocative.

Because it says something simple: most people on Earth don’t want to fight; they want a home. I wanted to show this Syrian family having the problems of anyone else. The young woman wants to fall in love. The couple has intimacy issues. The sister is more traumatized by her past, but she still wants to continue and fight for everyone’s well‑being.

Manipulation is about demonizing and dehumanizing people. That’s their shtick.

Vanessa: What you’re describing in the storytelling and the characters—they’re so relatable. You do make the refugees feel just like us.

And your light comedic touch makes it more accessible, especially for people who might have racist feelings or resistance. You poke fun at it in the smartest way.

Julie: I wanted to make something funny and also make fun of those people who are closed off and angry and racist. In a way, the film pissed off more people than I expected because the far right in France really went after me. They were furious because the film is a mirror. It says, “Listen, you can’t be that guy. You can’t be the plumber—he’s ridiculous.” I think it upset them even more than dramas about the subject. I really felt it; they were relentless on social media.

But that’s the price to pay if you make a film that says, “Hey, we can all live together. We can all bring each other things. We can mix cultures and there’s nothing better than mixed culture.” That’s something they hate because it’s the opposite of what they want to advertise. And for a blonde, blue‑eyed woman to say that— even more. I was actually attacked in Paris by a far‑right guy.

Vanessa: You were? That’s horrific.

Julie: Yeah, I had a huge bruise on my arm. I went to the police—he called me a racist slur linked to the film—and I showed them I’d been attacked. They were like, “We’ll never find the guy.” Typical French police.

Vanessa: That gives a whole other angle to the fact that you bravely put yourself in your films. It can’t be easy to write, direct, and act. By being a face in the story, you’re elevating it because everyone loves and knows you as an actress first. But you’re also making yourself vulnerable to what crazy people might do.

Julie: Well, (vulnerable) to more hate. But I think if I had just directed it, it would have been the same, because I did many TV shows in France presenting the film. The subject matter alone is going to upset people who buy into the narrative of the foreigner, the enemy.

It’s absurd. But racism is rooted in geography and religion. And now Christian fundamentalists are trying to take over everything.

Vanessa: I think we need that vision of a better future—which your film, Meet the Barbarians, does give us.

Julie: It’s a hopeful film. I wanted to make a hopeful film also because I have a kid and I don’t want him growing up in such a bleak world. There’s so much hate. Everyone’s angry. The minute you talk about a child who died in one war, someone says, “What about that kid who died in this other war?” It becomes this weird way of measuring suffering by bringing up other suffering.

It’s really hard right now to have conversations that aren’t hateful. This film is a bit of a fairy tale, but I wanted to say: in France there are villages that welcomed refugees from many countries, including African countries, and things went really well. So it’s not a fantasy. In some places it went really badly—and what’s interesting is that it wasn’t necessarily the people from the village. It was people from outside, like I show in the film.

People from outside came in and said, “They’re going to rape your daughters. They’re going to take over this place.” They freaked people out. These are sometimes very radical, organized groups who do only that all day long. They go around little villages and say, “This guy who’s building this house—soon he’s going to bring a bunch of wives, and soon your daughter will be in a burqa.” In five days they freak everybody out.

Vanessa: It is ridiculous, and it is so basic, this idea that we can…

Julie: And it’s so dumb. It’s so simplistic—but it works.

Vanessa: Yeah. So we are countering this through your beautiful film.

Julie: The film is the opposite of that. The funniest part about those people pointing fingers—“They’re going to oppress your wife and children, they’re going to turn your wives into slaves”—is that they themselves are the most macho, oppressive men. You’re like, “Wait a minute. You’re saying this guy is more dangerous than you?”

So I wanted to show all of this because it’s pretty absurd, and you can laugh with it. But at the same time, I wanted to make a film where, at the end, you’re moved by the story and by the hopefulness that there is still hope.

Vanessa: It’s a beautiful ending. It’s incredibly well directed. To land comedy may be the hardest genre. I don’t know if you feel that’s most challenging, but you seem fearless in taking on these challenges.

How did you, as a director, go about directing this movie?

Julie: Because it’s so difficult to do a film that’s emotional at times and sometimes funny, a lot of the work was done in stages: in the writing, on set with the actors, and then in the editing room. We were always walking a fine line.

For example, there’s a scene where they show what they’ve been through, where the sister with a missing leg explains what happened to her and her husband, the hospital being blown up. I realized very quickly that if we showed those images—images we’ve already seen too many times—our brains might be numb to them. And it becomes voyeuristic. So I decided not to show the images, just the sound.

I wanted to see the villagers watching: the children, the old, the young, the angry, the ones on the fence. If you’re a normal human being and you see people suffering, you will feel, right? Otherwise, humanity has failed. When you see a child dying and feel nothing and immediately say “but…,” you’ve failed humanity yourself—and maybe all of us, because we’re all linked. So it was important to show the faces of people reacting to suffering. You hear children cry—it’s heartbreaking.

If you show everything, you risk melodrama. I wanted comedy, then emotion, but not full, heavy drama. You don’t show all of it, but you know it’s horrifying. That’s how we walked the line constantly with this film. It’s funny, but then you have a scene on a beach—I won’t say what happens. It’s very funny, but when it happens, I always cry watching it, even watching my own film. That beach scene with everyone always gets me.

What’s hard with comedy is that you don’t get rewarded, because people think, “Oh, it’s just a funny film.” I’ve decided not to take it personally—it’s just how it is. This film is a comedy, but it’s not just a comedy. Still, I think it’s very noble to make comedies and make people laugh. Some of my favorite directors have made me laugh.

Vanessa: Yes, I completely agree. And it’s probably our best tool against authoritarianism, because dictators do not have senses of humor.

Julie: They have no sense of humor. They’d rather be described as monsters—they don’t mind that. But if someone laughs at them, they really care. It really upsets them. The way some of the French far right reacted to my film made it very clear that this kind of comedy bothers them more than something more in your face. It’s actually more dangerous for them.

Vanessa: Yeah. The life of a refugee is something we really haven’t grappled with enough. It’s a world problem right now. We’re insane about it politically in this country and in most countries. It’s a universal struggle and it’s everywhere. So it’s such a critical story, and you deal with it so beautifully. The ending really is moving.

Julie: Yeah. We went to a refugee camp and shot there. That’s when I really realized what a refugee is. I didn’t fully understand it, even though we had interviewed a lot of people, until I went there, met refugees, and understood the blocked possibilities of the children’s futures.

They’re all dreaming of being doctors. I spoke to so many children. I tried to film them, but the Jordanian military stopped me because the camp was under military supervision.

Vanessa: So this is the Syrian refugee camp in Jordan?

Julie: The largest one—80,000 people. It’s absolutely gigantic. It built itself very quickly. The Syrian border is about 10 kilometers away. When we shot there, there were tanks from Assad’s forces near the border, so it was very militarized because they couldn’t risk Assad’s forces coming into the camp and killing people.

What broke my heart was seeing all those children with dreams but so little. At the beginning in a refugee camp you have a lot of people, the UN is there, there are services. Then things start to wear out. There are fewer hours of school, fewer people available, and you sort of forget about them. It was hard to see that they were going to school only a couple of hours a day, most of them.

A translator told me, when I asked what the kids were talking about, “They barely have words to express themselves. Their Arabic is very limited because they don’t have education.” This refugee camp is not like the family I describe in the film. The family in the film is based on people from Damascus—educated people. But if you take refugees from small villages, they already have very limited opportunities.

At the time, we didn’t know what would happen with Assad. We wondered, “How long will they be here?” They’ve been there for twelve years.

All those kids were born in the camp. They’re born there and they can’t get out. They can never get out. That’s a refugee camp—they can never get out. A few parents are allowed to go work in the nearby city, but it’s a very limited life.

They have built a whole society for themselves, with a main street full of shops and things. Life continues. Those kids are amazingly beautiful, every single one. But it’s not good to be a refugee. It’s not an easy life. It breaks you.

We met a few refugees from Damascus who were suffering from depression. I tried to show it in the father who refuses to work. He wants to do his job. He’s an architect. He doesn’t want to be picking things or being an Uber driver—not that it’s bad to be an Uber driver, but he’s an architect.

Vanessa: It’s a loss of identity—a loss of profession, of identity, of taking care of your family.

Julie: Exactly. And we noticed that for men it was really hard, because they had built whole careers and everything was gone. Women, even those who had careers, were more often okay with saying, “I’m going to go pick artichokes. I’ll do what I need to do.” Not always, but we saw a trend. That’s why we put it in the film: she’s more like, “I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll work for that old, disgusting man”—I forget the name I gave him. My dad plays the farmer.

Vanessa: That’s exactly where I was going next. We have clearly drawn characters from Syria, but the French characters are fantastic too.

Your dad is terrific in it and has been in several of your projects. How did you cast them?

Julie: He’s an old farmer who’s sort of left‑wing and open. I think he’s open to them working as long as she’s pretty. I wanted a character who’s funny and endearing. He hates the racist guy, thinks he’s an idiot, and will do anything to get on his nerves. Hiring the Syrian woman is already obnoxious to that racist man, and he does worse—he gives the family a house. He does everything that drives the racists insane.

I had so much fun. My dad was so much fun to work with again. I hope to work with him again. I wrote something for him, but it’s really hard to put together, especially in France, because again, it’s political.

Vanessa: (His) sausage scene in Two Days in New York is too funny.

Julie: Yeah, yeah—there’s sausage everywhere. My dad was arrested at the border because he had Cuban cigars. It wasn’t sausage, but Cuban cigars. You’re not allowed to bring Cuban cigars into America, and in France that’s what everyone smokes.

So he was arrested and they took his cigars. He was furious. Thank God it wasn’t now—he’d probably be in detention.

So, back to Brittany: the town is called Paimpont, which is very funny in French. It’s a medieval town. It looks a lot like Ireland—Brittany does in general—black stone, lots of green. There’s a lake there that’s famous because people say it was one of the lakes of the Arthurian myth, the Round Table. The French say it happened in France; the British say it happened in England.

That lake is famous in France because it’s supposed to be a magical lake. The only problem we had shooting there in summer is that it’s a ‘pèlerinage’ (pilgrimage site) for druids. They go and pray to nature. You have people walking barefoot with sticks, dressed in capes and medieval stuff. It’s like Merlin. It’s a special place.

Vanessa: And so in this special place, as a director you’re creating an environment where everyone feels free to be spontaneous and funny and serious. It’s so well directed—it really is.

Julie: Thank you. I love to bring people to a place where they feel pure joy. I really like joy on set for the actors. This is my background—my parents were both actors—and I grew up with the idea that acting should be pleasurable. Some people like to torture actors, but I personally love actors to feel happy and free.

It’s very rare for me to have a difficult time with an actor; you really have to be a difficult person for it not to go well. On this film, people were having the time of their lives. We still talk about how much fun it was, how pleasant it was to be in that one‑street village. The hotel at the end of the street, everything there, nowhere to go.

In the middle of summer, by the lake, people were really happy. It was a little like a holiday sometimes, even though we worked extremely long hours. The kids didn’t want to go home—we were constantly having to say, “Legally, you have to go.” “Oh, I want to stay.” It was really fun to be on set.

Vanessa: Amazing. Do you see this film as connected to your previous directing efforts? Do you see a through line? There’s comedy, very cerebral but down‑to‑earth dialogue, and love stories.

Julie: Yeah. I like very different kinds of films. My taste goes from Fanny and Alexander to Star Wars, with Godard in between, and comedies. I love French comedies from the ’30s and ’40s like La Règle du Jeu, The Rules of the Game, but also dumb comedies. I like very, very different cinema—from sci‑fi to very serious, intellectual films to comedy. I love Mel Brooks, many things.

Vanessa: You have directed films in France and here in the U.S. Do you feel there’s a difference? Has Hollywood or the independent environment here made it easier or harder?

As a woman director, do you feel there’s less support?

Julie: It’s much easier for me in France as a woman director. I didn’t have bad experiences here. The two things I shot here—Two Days in New York and my TV show—were fine, but Two Days in New York was a little expensive for what was on camera. I felt the weight of production in the U.S. is heavier.

In France you can make a film for very little and not have a huge apparatus. For Two Days in Paris we had half a million euros and shot in 17 days. For Two Days in New York there were so many rules: “No, you can’t have this, you can’t have that.” I wanted a scene on top of the Empire State Building and was told, “You can never shoot there.” So I went with a still camera, took pictures of the cast, and made a photo montage.

You can’t shoot here, you can’t film strangers or they’ll sue us. We sometimes had to go against the rules because there were so many. On my TV show On the Verge we had similar issues, but it was during COVID, which was a weird time. People forgot about us, and probably thought we were going to shut down anyway. We were the tiniest production ever.

Vanessa: I thought the difference with shooting in France was supposed to be that you get three months to shoot an independent film, not 17 days. That’s brutal—17 days.

Julie: Well, that was my first film. My other films I shot in 30 days, so it was more comfortable, but I don’t think I ever had much more than that. I’ve never been over‑financed—never.

And my films have always made money.

Vanessa: I wonder how difficult it is to direct yourself in your own film. You create this great environment, everyone’s enjoying being there and working with you, and then you also have to be on camera.

Julie: It’s difficult. I enjoy the days when I’m not acting much more. I cast myself—at least in French movies—because it helps with financing. When you’re a director and you have no one in your film, it helps to say, “I have one actress, she’s available, she’s also directing.” You don’t need another hotel room.

But it’s hard—really hard. The positive side is that my energy, especially for comedies, goes into everyone. I’m like a locomotive, the engine that drags everyone into this energy of chaos. I love chaos. I love filming chaos. I think it’s full of life and fun to watch: people fighting, people arguing, someone giving birth with a hundred people around—that’s life.

But it’s hard.

I would love my next film to not have me in it. It’s something I want: to move more and more into directing only. I can still act in other people’s films, but I’d love my films to be only directing.

When I directed the Syrian family scenes and I wasn’t in them, or the plumber and nurse in bed, it was so freeing not to be in the scene—to not have to worry about acting and being in front of the camera. That’s what I want to move toward.

I have many projects—one in particular I’m not going to talk about; it’s a bit of a secret. I write all the time. I write comedies, darker stuff, weird films. I have so many things I want to do—sci‑fi, horror, anything. I’m open to anything as long as it’s not a snappy, bad romantic story.

There’s nothing that annoys me more than selling people a fake idea of love—a cheap thing. To me, that’s really manipulating people. So every time I’ve written about love—on the Before series, on Two Days in Paris—I’ve tried to go in a direction that’s more truthful. People in love, but real.

Some romantic comedies or love stories are so simplistic.

Vanessa: They are. They’re selling women especially an idea of romance they think they should aspire to. It seriously impacts culture. It impacts gender relations.

Julie: It’s part of a capitalist system; it feeds the system in the worst way and makes people miserable.

I see people expecting something because of that narrative. I’m not even a big fan of Valentine’s Day. Why one day to celebrate? Let’s celebrate every day, when we’re actually together. Systems tell you, “This is a great moment; you’re supposed to be happy.” And if that day you’re not happy, you feel worse. “I didn’t get the flowers…” It’s too much.

I got married to my husband at the courthouse at LAX. The lady who married us had a tattoo on her neck. I thought, “This is it. This is great.” It lasted 30 seconds. My husband was almost arrested because he crossed a yellow line or did something wrong. It was hilarious.

I think the couple before us—the guy was in jail and out just for a couple of hours. The couple after us was this weird family with about 40 kids. I don’t know what was going on there. It was really great. My idea of romance is never the one being sold to us in films, and it bothers me.

Vanessa: That’s a good through line, actually: through the films you’ve been in and written and directed, you’re giving us a more authentic, genuine love story. I think that’s what draws everyone to this work. Meet the Barbarians is full of love—you have love for the characters, and they have all these different love stories happening in this bizarre situation with the Syrian refugees. It’s beautiful.

Also, your character falls in love—your character is so funny and so sweet, and I love how that happens. I don’t want to spoil it; I want everyone to see this movie. I want them to know how many different layers and tones you fit into this film. It’s fantastic. It’s of a piece with your body of work, because you have consistently delivered some of our best love stories on film.

Julie: I really value love—all forms of love: love for people you work with creatively; love for the person you share your life with; love for your mother, for people around you, for strangers too. It’s something special and simple at the same time. I don’t want to make it something cheap. It cheapens it. I try to go against that, truly.

Vanessa: Yes, exactly. That’s beautiful. Brilliant. Thank you so much for coming and talking about this. It’s so weird to say “thank you for joining me here”—where are we? We’re in the laptops. This was really great.

Julie: Thank you.

Vanessa: Huge honor. I really want everyone to go see your film. So, it’s February 19th (and 20th) in New York. We’re going to make sure there’s a retrospective of all of your films—the films you’ve directed. We’ll make sure this happens, that more people see your film, and that more screenings happen. I hope we make this a reality. Thank you, Julie.

Julie Delpy has made a name for herself as an accomplished actress, screenwriter, and director in both Europe and the U.S., having studied writing and directing at NYU. She wrote, directed, and starred in 2 Days in New York, opposite Chris Rock, a follow-up to her critically acclaimed film 2 Days in Paris; made independently in Paris, it received rave reviews in Berlin and went on to secure global distribution. As a writer, Delpy co-wrote Before Sunset and Before Midnight, earning two Oscar nominations and multiple best screenplay awards, while Before Midnight also brought her Golden Globe and Spirit Award nominations for best actress. Since the age of 14, she has worked with some of the world’s most esteemed directors, including Jean-Luc Godard (Detective), Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa), Krzysztof Kieślowski (the Trois Couleurs trilogy), and Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers), reflecting a list of collaborators as versatile as her talents and films. In 2009, Delpy presented The Countess, which she wrote and directed, at the Berlinale; she went on to win the director’s prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2011 for The Skylab, while her French comedy blockbuster Lolo and her feature My Zoe were both presented at TIFF, in 2016 and 2019 respectively. In 2021, she presented the series On The Verge on Canal+ and Netflix. Delpy’s most recent project is her new film Meet The Barbarians, released by Le Pacte in France and sold internationally by Charade.

“A roaring, funny, and surprisingly moving portrait of an absurd, yet deeply felt, communal experience.”

“The film’s greatest triumph is the way it finds real emotional truth in the midst of utter chaos.”

Variety

“A high-wire act of ensemble comedy, with every performer delivering a flawless performance.

IndieWire

Meet The Barbarians

Thu, Feb 19 at 07:00 PM EST at NYCFF at Asylum NYC

JULIE DELPY IN PERSON FOR Q&A

BUY TICKETS

NYCFF at Asylum NYC
123 E 24th St, Between Park & Lex

This conversation explores Taiwan’s critical role in international organizations and the urgent need for its inclusion in global governance, in order to uphold global stability and promote an international order that values contribution over coercion.

Event RSVP Link to watch Invisible Nation for the next few days: https://watch.eventive.org/togetherfilmsus/play/68ed0fc3eb1ac02b56e6f2fd

transcript lightly edited for clarity and brevity

Vanessa Hope: I’m very excited to be joined this evening. It’s morning in Taipei and evening in Los Angeles.

Audrey Tang: Sometimes we just say, good local time.

Vanessa: Good local time for this hopeful conversation about why international institutions need Taiwan. It’s a huge honor to be joined by Audrey Tang, who is Taiwan’s cyber ambassador and first Digital Minister from 2016 to 2024, when I had the tremendous fortune of interviewing her for our film Invisible Nation. She is a pioneer of digital democracy and the 2025 Right Livelihood Laureate. I’m also thrilled to be joined by Michael Fern, who’s become a friend and is a cybercrime prosecutor and Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles County, chair of the International Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and author of American Bar Association Resolution 700 supporting Taiwan’s inclusion in global institutions.

Michael made a very moving short video, which is on my Substack and which I will reshare (linked here), about UN General Assembly Resolution 2758—how it’s been misused, and why Taiwan really should be included in the UN.

Global governance is at a crossroads, and the world is witnessing escalating geopolitical fragmentation—from Russia’s nuclear threats to China’s intentions toward Taiwan, to the unraveling of the Western alliance under America’s now chaotic turn. At this moment of uncertainty, Taiwan’s exclusion from major international organizations poses a defining question for the future of global legitimacy. This hopeful conversa tion envisions what a more inclusive, plural, and effective international order might look like—one that recognizes contribution, not coercion, as the basis of participation.

Thank you both for being here. Thank you, Audrey. Thank you, Michael.

Michael Fern: Thank you. I do want to state at the outset that the views expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of any entity I’m employed by or affiliated with.

Audrey: Yes, for me too.

Vanessa: Yes, thank you very much for sharing your personal views. Okay, great.

So, why is Taiwan’s inclusion in international organizations urgent today? Audrey, can you start us off?

Audrey: Sure. I think the biggest misunderstanding so far is conflating participation with recognition. Sometimes we hear this idea that a zero-sum sovereignty battle is happening in international organizations. But it’s actually a public-interest question, because most international organizations run on functional participation—sharing data, following standards, coordinating in emergencies. Taiwan’s track record in the WTO and APEC proves that contribution-based participation works without touching diplomatic recognition or zero-sum battles.

The main misunderstanding I personally face is about UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. Legal analyses by the German Marshall Fund, the UK Parliament, and the European Parliament now confirm that the resolution does not actually mention Taiwan, nor does it determine Taiwan’s status, and so it does not preclude participation. However, for many decades, Beijing has treated it as a blank check—but it is not a blank check. So who needs to hear this? I think permanent representatives and secretariat officials who mistake political pressure for legal obligation. Administrative inertia is not international law. Like-minded democracies that depend on multilateral reliability must also hear this, because they have the most to gain from insisting these systems work as designed.

Vanessa: Incredibly well said. I hope everyone can absorb this. I’m very happy—we will share the transcript of this panel along with the video so that people can really review your carefully thought-out words. It’s very important. Michael, do you have anything you’d like to add to that answer?

Michael: Sure. I think one of the most misunderstood arguments against including Taiwan is the idea that it will raise tensions with Beijing or be a catalyst for conflict to recognize or to include Taiwan. I actually think it’s the opposite. Including Taiwan—recognizing Taiwan’s role—is what allows the region to maintain peace and stability. The invisibility of Taiwan is, frankly, a risk for conflict, because part of the PRC’s long-term strategy is to isolate Taiwan, to block Taiwan’s relations with other countries, in order to make it easier one day to use force to take it over. The more Taiwan is interconnected with the world—economically, diplomatically, and politically—the stronger the conditions are for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Vanessa: Yes, thank you so much. From a law and security perspective, Michael, what are the tangible risks when Taiwan is cut off from cooperation—whether in public health, cybersecurity, or aviation safety?

Michael: Taiwan is at the forefront of all these areas. Taiwan is one of the frontiers in cybersecurity and defense. It’s constantly being probed and attacked by different groups, many of which we believe are from the People’s Republic of China. There’s a lot the world can learn from that—just as many Baltic states have experienced cyberattacks from Russia. These smaller states on the so‑called periphery of our consciousness are actually great places for the world to learn how authoritarian regimes try to undermine societies.

In terms of public health, it goes without saying that Taiwan has a fantastic public health system—one of the world’s best and least expensive. Taiwan was at the forefront of giving the world warnings about COVID‑19. If those alerts from contacts in China had been heeded, they might have helped prevent some of the destruction we saw during the pandemic and the lockdowns. Taiwan was one of the most successful countries because of its proactive policies and early quarantine measures, long before many other countries took action.

Vanessa: Yes, in fact—Audrey, you have this expertise. I remember from our interview in Taipei for Invisible Nation, the “humor over rumor” campaign. You spearheaded these brilliant efforts that got people in Taiwan up to speed on what to do during COVID. Please share.

Audrey: Yes. “Humor over rumor” was in February 2020. We had just started rationing masks. I remember speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) about how important that was. We open-sourced the real-time pharmacy mask inventory as open data for civic technologists, and within 72 hours they built dozens of apps to help citizens find resources. Peer‑reviewed research confirmed that this kind of public-sector transparency enabled rapid grassroots response while reducing panic.

Instead of one side saying, “You need the highest‑grade N95; the medical masks we’re rationing are just placebo,” and the other side saying, “It’s all about ventilation, masks hurt you and N95 kills you,” it didn’t polarize like that in Taiwan. We created a very funny meme: a Shiba Inu, a cute dog, wearing a mask, with a paw saying, “Mask protects you from your dirty unwashed hands.” So if you don’t like wearing a mask, I like wearing a mask; I’m just reminding you to wash your hands. That humor over rumor pre‑bunked the tension and polarization around mask use. We did similar things around contact tracing, vaccination, and so on.

But when WHO excludes Taiwan, these innovations stay siloed. These weren’t just experiments; they worked. We lost only seven people in 2020 to COVID. But because these approaches could not be integrated into global training, exercises, standards, or reporting protocols, that interoperable trust stayed in Taiwan and in a few partners like New Zealand, which did learn from the Taiwan playbook. Exclusion keeps Taiwan isolated, but the real harm is to global health.

Vanessa: Absolutely. It’s not enough that I personally learned “humor over rumor” and had the advantage of learning from Taiwan. Through Invisible Nation, we hope the whole world can see and learn from Taiwan—but including Taiwan in international organizations like the World Health Organization is what will make the real difference. Your incredible work and innovation need to be shared. Audrey, Taiwan has built some of the world’s most responsive digital systems. How does its exclusion weaken global capacity to respond to crises that demand openness and data sharing?

Audrey: That’s a great question. What Taiwan has built has three layers. First, technical and professional access—not just in health data, as we just discussed, but also public health in environmental sensing. We have some of the world’s densest networks for environmental sensing: not just climate, but also air quality, water quality, noise levels, and so on.

Second, we turned this into basic education. In 2019, we changed our curriculum from literacy—consuming information—to competency—producing information together. Institutional fact‑checking alone does not inoculate young minds from polarization and conspiracy theories. But going through the fact‑checking process as a peer group does; they learn the art of pre‑bunking. This should be part of international curricula so that people around the world can do social translation across cultures, see through one another’s eyes, and avoid being polarized by out‑of‑context information manipulation.

Third, we need legal enforcement. Taiwan is the first country in the world to require full‑spectrum digital signatures for online advertisements. Because of that, throughout the past year we’ve had no deepfake scam ads. If you scroll Facebook or YouTube in Taiwan, you just don’t see those crypto-investment or similar scam ads. Now we’re seeing, for example, Japan looking to adopt the Taiwan model for full‑spectrum KYC/“Know Your Customer” and related measures. So it’s not just civic competency and expert consensus. At some point, bottom‑up protocol-setting becomes national law. We also need ways to interoperate such laws among nations so cybercriminals cannot simply arbitrage by registering and posting in the most vulnerable jurisdictions.

Vanessa: Wow. We spoke in advance about this next question. We want to keep Taiwan at the center of our conversation, but since we’re talking about international organizations and the broader international order, it feels like we can’t ignore this recent speech by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney describing a rupture in the international order—that we’re no longer in a transition. And Chris Horton, a journalist with a new book about Taiwan called Ghost Nation—whom I’ve just interviewed for A Hopeful Conversation—has argued that this international order Carney critiques has never really served Taiwan.

Can you speak to where we are in the international order? In my opinion, if smaller and medium-sized countries like Canada and Taiwan could drive the international order, we’d all be in a much better place. But I’m sure you both have strong views. Audrey, would you like to go first?

Audrey: Sure. As you said, Taiwan was never really fully served by the rules‑based international order. So while Prime Minister Carney’s speech resonates with many nations that depend on rules to maintain a level playing field, that same “level playing field” allowed 23.5 million people to be excluded from the global agenda and let political pressure masquerade as institutional rule.

The real question is: what principles drive the coming reconfiguration? A reconfiguration is coming. If coercion sets the terms, that’s regression. But if contribution, transparency, and interoperability become the threshold for participation, that could be evolution.

Taiwan’s situation is a test case for any proposed new international order: do we build systems where demonstrated competence earns a seat—yes or no? If yes, it’s a better order. If not, it’s not evolution. If we accept a system where might makes right, that’s not the direction we want. The answer we give for Taiwan tells us where global governance is heading.

Vanessa: Beautifully said. Michael, would you like to add to that?

Michael: Sure. To some degree, I lean toward Chris Horton’s view. His piece was spot‑on in explaining that when we talk about the “international order,” we’re talking about an order in which Taiwan is excluded. The irony is that Taiwan—at least when the Republic of China government sat in China—was one of the UN’s founding members in 1945, even though it was then an authoritarian state based in China until it was driven exclusively to Taiwan in 1949.

There’s an idealized version of the postwar order that Carney talks about. But in truth, it’s a post‑World War II order created by the victors, including authoritarian states. It’s been imperfect from the start, and power politics have always shaped it. The United States has been the so‑called global hegemon and, for many years, supported peace, security, global trade, and—to varying degrees—human rights. My concern today is that under the current administration we’re sliding back from that. I hope that’s not permanent, but we’ll see.

Vanessa: Yes, we’ll see.

Audrey, you have this brilliant concept of “plurality” that suggests democracy thrives on inclusive systems. What would a modern, plural global architecture look like if it were designed today?

Your words already give me hope. I agree with what both of you are saying, and Michael, what you added. It’s upsetting—such a regression—to think the world could be based only on might-makes-right. We know that’s wrong. We know violence is wrong. We know endless war is not what we want. There are these leading-light democracies like Taiwan, which could help everyone understand the way forward, if only they were allowed to. We can learn so much from you.

So please share, Audrey: what is it in your concept of plurality that would lead us to a better global order?

Audrey: Plurality is fundamentally about community by design. Instead of technologies that pull people out of communities into a global social‑media space that promotes polarization and “engagement through enragement,” plurality turns it around so that conflicts within and across communities are seen not as volcanoes to flee from, but as geothermal energy to tap for co‑creation.

Taiwan, being the youngest tectonic island—only about four million years old—knows something about earthquakes and how they push Taiwan skyward by about half a centimeter each year. The plurality governance model is what my colleague Caroline Green and I have been developing at the University of Oxford. We think of human and AI systems—and many other systems—interoperating. We call it a six‑pack of care; the framework lives at 6pack.care

Imagine global governance—of AI agents and humans—not as a hierarchy with gatekeepers at each level, but as an ecosystem of many local guardians, like the Japanese concept of kami, or local spirits. The kami of a river has no ambition to manage the forest; its purpose is fulfilled by ensuring the river thrives. The forest kami does the same for the forest. They interoperate through shared protocols, not central command.

From this, three design principles flow: (1) Composability—don’t lock participation into a single recognition status; break it into layers—data-sharing, standard-setting, joint exercises, mutual recognition in capacity building—so entities participate wherever they can contribute. (2) Verifiability—claims and risk reports must be auditable, reducing the space for rumor and political manipulation. (3) Interoperable trust—in domains like health, aviation, and technical agreements for cross‑border cooperation, trust frameworks should be protected from political disruption; expertise must flow even when politics is gridlocked.

In summary, modern governance architecture should work like how AI agents and humans interact on the internet—focused on protocols and interoperability, not a single power center deciding who gets to connect.

Vanessa: So inspiring! Michael, can international law adapt within existing structures, or does justice for unrecognized nations require building something entirely new?

Michael: With the caveat that I’m not an international-law specialist—I’m just a lawyer—my observation is that we need fundamental change in how things work. We saw this in 2022 when Russia launched its full‑scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia used its permanent veto on the UN Security Council to block effective action—and it still sits there. Two of the world’s leading authoritarian states, Russia and China, are permanent members of the UN Security Council. That’s part of the post‑World War II order.

I don’t have much confidence that the UN can reform itself. It’s financially strapped, increasingly dependent on China for funding, while the U.S. has pulled back. If anything, I fear the UN will become even less effective in advancing human rights, peace, and security, and in defending small democracies. What replaces it? I don’t know.

Vanessa: Audrey is giving us hope for the future. But I have a follow‑up question for you, Michael. In transnational law enforcement, cooperation depends on trust and data sharing. How does Taiwan’s exclusion make all of us more vulnerable to cybercrime and disinformation?

Michael: Part of it is that Taiwan is really at the forefront of attacks every day by China—hacking, infiltration, disinformation campaigns, and the use of Chinese apps to spread that disinformation. The U.S. has begun to look at this, but Taiwan’s proximity and its role as a leading tech hub make its experience uniquely valuable. There’s so much to learn from how Taiwan handles its own cybersecurity, especially as a key node in supply chains of talent, hardware, and software that are essential to addressing these threats. I’d love to hear more from Audrey about policies or laws in Taiwan that could be adapted elsewhere.

Vanessa: Audrey, yes—you have this expertise. Please share more on this question Michael has raised; your work fighting disinformation on behalf of Taiwan is extraordinary.

Audrey: I recently co‑authored a piece in Science about malicious AI swarms and how to overcome them. Today, disinformation—defined as something false—is giving way to “vibe attacks”: thousands of AI‑agent‑driven accounts, each sharing a piece of news that may be factual, but expressed with intense emotion. There’s nothing wrong with feeling strongly, but when you’re surrounded by such content, it creates an illusion of consensus—like astroturfing.

Think of the meme with a dog sitting in a house on fire, enjoying the warmth and light, saying, “This is fine.” It’s not fine. People are being surrounded by synthetic intimacy, generated by AI systems that are superhumanly persuasive across cultures. To fight that, you can’t just focus on content.

The content layer is almost useless now, because synthetic intimacy can spread via direct messages and small group chats, making much of the public-information defense apparatus ineffective. Taiwan’s approach focuses on actors and behaviors instead.

For example, a couple of years ago we sent 200,000 text messages to random numbers in Taiwan—so we knew they were local residents—from the certified government number 111, so everyone knew it was official. The message was simple: “Deepfakes threaten information security and integrity online. What should we do together?” This wasn’t a minister announcing a top‑down policy; it was an invitation for people to brainstorm.

Thousands volunteered; we selected 447 people as a statistical microcosm of Taiwan’s population, balanced by gender, age, and other factors. In groups of ten, they deliberated online, each person engaging with nine others, under a ground rule that you had to convince each other for an idea to become law.

One group proposed that all online ads should display something like a cigarette warning label and that only a digital signature could authorize their removal—creating fiduciary authentication. Another group proposed that if Facebook or YouTube publishes an unsigned ad and someone loses, say, seven or eight million dollars because of it, the platform should be jointly liable for the damage—since it effectively became a partner in crime. A third group pointed out that TikTok did not yet have a legal representative office in Taiwan. If it ignored our liability rules, what then? Their solution was to slow down connections to TikTok by 1% each day they ignored us—throttling, not censorship. In practice, the Chinese app “小红书” (Xiaohongshu), “Little Red Book,” actually triggered this clause.

We then used AI systems to weave these ideas into coherent draft rules. Participants voted at the end of the day; 85% agreed and the remaining 15% could at least live with the outcome. The resulting law passed within a few months. That’s why, throughout the past year, there have been no deepfake scam ads on Taiwanese social media.

And because cybercrime is non‑partisan—there’s no pro‑cybercrime party—this made our polity more anti‑fragile. Instead of one side arguing for freedom of speech and the other for public safety, the two reinforced each other, like plates bumping together and lifting “玉山” Yushan, Jade Mountain, higher. The legislation matters, but the process itself is widely shareable.

Vanessa: I love it. I love all these visual metaphors, too—they’re very evocative. We need to make a Miyazaki film, or a Taiwanese animated film, to demonstrate all of this.

Audrey, what incremental reforms could global institutions make now to include Taiwan, even symbolically, without requiring full recognition?

Audrey: This again comes in three layers. On the technical and professional layer: the World Health Organization of the UN (WHO) holds technical meetings in which Taiwan has occasionally participated. We should expand and stabilize that participation. WHO itself has acknowledged Taiwan’s expert involvement. Making it systematic, not ad hoc, would go a long way.

On the standards layer: the Taipei Flight Information Region (FIR) served about 1.85 million flights annually pre‑pandemic. Excluding the Taipei FIR airspace from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)’s standard‑setting and information exchange is a system failure, not a policy choice. For example, during the 2022 PLA exercises, Taiwan had to rely on Japan and the Philippines to reroute civilian flights because ICAO was effectively unavailable as a channel. Fixing this would improve safety for everyone.

On legal interoperability: Taiwan has been excluded from Interpol for over four decades. At minimum, we need a direct cooperation window on human trafficking networks and cybercrime incidents. I don’t think that’s controversial—criminals shouldn’t benefit from institutional gaps. There is no pro–organized-crime international bloc, as far as I know. The political opening exists.

Democratic parliaments have clarified that Resolution 2758 does not preclude Taiwan’s participation, and the ABA has passed Resolution 700 supporting this inclusion. Secretariats no longer need to treat political pressure as a legal obligation on any of these three layers.

Vanessa: Yes, brilliantly said. Michael, do you have anything you’d like to add?

Michael: The practical challenge is that China remains, in some respects, more influential than the U.S. in shaping bodies such as WHO and Interpol. Interpol has had PRC leadership, and WHO has also seen Chinese influence at the top. The core problem is political. At a functional level, Taiwan simply needs enough votes from member states to join or even observe. How do you get those votes? Taiwan needs to expand its international allies—not just big countries, but also small states.

So while the solutions are technically straightforward, the obstacles are political. As Audrey points out, the current “band‑aid” is to rely on friendly nations—Japan, the Philippines, the United States—to convey Taiwanese expertise to international organizations or to relay information from bodies like Interpol back to Taiwan. That’s the status quo.

The question is: how can Taiwan build enough international support to secure at least observer status?

Vanessa: I seem to recall, Audrey, that there may be a digital solution to this that you came up with—digital diplomacy around the countries that support Taiwan. Can you speak a little about that?

Audrey: Definitely. You’re perhaps referring to my 2017 participation in the UN Internet Governance Forum in Geneva through telepresence. The gatekeeping was literally at the door. Last I checked, robots don’t need passports. So a telepresence robot entered, and I connected to it. It didn’t “represent” me so much as re‑present me—my face on the robot. I believe that was the first time a PRC envoy and a Taiwanese minister spoke in the same UN meeting on the record. It set a precedent. I’ve been able to participate in many UN meetings this way.

But this isn’t only about using telepresence to bypass politics. It’s also a demonstration—not just a protest—showing that open, verifiable, replicable cooperation can build trust across communities even when formal diplomatic channels are blocked. In a sense, the dialogue between the PRC envoy and me at the IGF was itself a proof of concept. And during the pandemic, of course, this kind of remote participation became the norm.

Vanessa: Yes, so brilliant. Finally, this is our last question—but if either of you want to add more of your expertise or knowledge, we can go a little longer.

What are the lessons that mid‑sized democratic nations can take from Taiwan’s resilience in navigating a system that seems stacked against them?

I’m thinking about everything Taiwan can share so others can learn—and how that might help build the new international system we hope to see. Audrey, would you like to go first?

Audrey: Sure—three simple lessons. First, treat transparency as strategic security infrastructure—cognitive security. Transparency is not just a moral posture; it’s the foundation of societal cohesion amid information manipulation and malicious AI swarms. When government is radically open, it’s much harder for malign actors to fill information vacuums.

Second, treat civil society organizations as partners, not onlookers. Civic tech communities like Taiwan's g0v (pronounced "gov-zero") are not “mobilized” by ministers; they are co‑creators of policy. This relationship multiplies state capacity without expanding state overreach.

Third, when recognition is blocked, make contribution undeniable. Taiwan’s indispensable contributions in semiconductors, democratic innovation, and crisis response mean that its exclusion visibly weakens the systems that practice it.

The point is not that Taiwan needs recognition; it’s that the international system needs Taiwan to maintain its own anti‑fragility.

Vanessa: Yes, yes. So well said. Michael, please share what you’d add.

Michael: What comes to mind is the Benjamin Franklin quote: “We must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.”

That still applies to many smaller countries today. Take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many of the munitions Russia uses contain chips manufactured in Taiwan. Taiwan is a critical part of that supply chain. The international system needs to include Taiwan if it wants to address proliferation of these components to countries that use them to bombard and invade others.

And just to be clear for people listening: Taiwan is not supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Taiwan supports Ukraine. The issue is that as the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturing hub, Taiwan produces chips that end up—often via Chinese companies, or others—in weapons used by Russia. U.S. chips are also found in these systems. We live in an interconnected world.

If we want to address problems like cybercrime or arms proliferation, where bombs are made from components sourced worldwide, Taiwan must be part of the conversation because of how critical it is.

For smaller countries more broadly, each has some core competency that others rely on. Greenland, though not an independent country, is a major source of rare earths. Estonia, bordering Russia and highly digitally advanced, is another country in a situation somewhat like Taiwan’s—small, democratic, and at risk from a powerful authoritarian neighbor. These countries have a natural affinity with Taiwan.

There is space for an alliance of smaller democracies under threat, who can band together and support one another.

Vanessa: Yes. I keep thinking about the UK as well. There are so many powerful countries that happen to be geographically small but wield outsized influence. It would be to the world’s benefit to have greater impact and influence from Taiwan. It’s such a basic idea.

Audrey, you’ve given us so much hope for what could be in a world where Taiwan is given the place it deserves, and where international institutions understand that they need Taiwan. Do you have any concluding thoughts you’d like to add?

Audrey: Yes. My main message is that Taiwan is not a problem; Taiwan is the solution.

If Taiwan is excluded, that creates a systemic risk the whole world carries. When we let contribution be blocked by coercion, we teach institutions that power overrides rules. But if we design participation to be composable, verifiable, and interoperable, we repair the legitimacy of global cooperation.

Our next generation should not inherit a global order fractured by fear. It deserves a commonwealth that works in a plural world. After all, no democracy is an island—not even Taiwan. So let’s free the future together.

Vanessa: Yes, that’s so beautiful. That’s a perfect way to end. I’m so grateful for your time. Thank you, Audrey. Thank you, Michael, for being here. Thank you to everyone who will watch and read this. We hope to help bring this world to a better place through Taiwan.

Michael: Thank you.

Audrey: Thank you. Live long and prosper.

Vanessa: Yes.

Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s cyber ambassador, first digital minister (2016-2024), architect of the Taiwan Model for digital diplomacy and a 2025 Right Livelihood laureate. World-renowned as a civic tech pioneer, Audrey was pivotal in shaping g0v (gov-zero), as well as platforms like vTaiwan and Join. In 2023, Audrey was named one of TIME magazine’s “Most Influential People in AI.”

Michael Fern is a cybercrime prosecutor in Los Angeles, serves as a trustee for the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and chairs the LACBA International Law Section. In 2024, he organized and led LACBA’s trip to Taiwan, which culminated in the signing of a friendship agreement with Taipei Bar Association. As a member of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates, he authored ABA Resolution 700, which supports the efforts of the United States Government to promote Taiwan’s inclusion in the international system. Mr. Fern graduated with a B.A. in Government and Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College in 2001 and received his J.D. from the University of Southern California in 2004.

Vanessa Hope is an award-winning producer and director whose career bridges filmmaking and foreign policy. Her directing credits include Invisible Nation—Taiwan’s top documentary of 2025 and the third most popular in its history. Before founding Double Hope Films with her husband, producer Ted Hope, she worked at the Council on Foreign Relations on Asia policy. Vanessa holds a B.A. in Anthropology and East Asian Studies from the University of Chicago and pursued doctoral studies at Columbia University.