Wei Te-sheng: The Taiwanese Epic Filmmaker from Yongkang 1969, from Cape No. 7’s Hundred-Million Box Office to Venice Competition

30-second overview: Wei Te-sheng was born on August 16, 1969, in Yongkang Township, Tainan County (today Yongkang District, Tainan City).¹ He studied electrical engineering at Far East Junior College of Technology (now Far East University) and, after graduation, entered the film industry as an assistant director.¹ In 2008, he directed Cape No. 7, which grossed approximately NT$530 million, becoming Taiwan’s highest-grossing film at the time (P0⚠️ confirms “over NT$100 million”; NT$530 million is a commonly cited figure, and official statistics should be checked).² In 2011, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale was selected for the main competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, competing for the Golden Lion.³ That same year, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale won Best Feature Film at the 48th Golden Horse Awards.⁴ He is currently preparing the epic Taiwan Trilogy project.

August 16, 1969: Yongkang, Tainan

Wei Te-sheng was born on August 16, 1969, in Yongkang Township, Tainan County (today Yongkang District, Tainan City).¹ He studied electrical engineering at Far East Junior College of Technology (now Far East University), and his technical training sharpened his sensitivity to production craft.¹

In the 1990s, Wei entered the film industry as an assistant director, learning on the crews of several Taiwanese directors. Taiwan’s film industry was in a prolonged downturn at the time, with very little room for local productions in theatrical distribution; most young people did not see “filming Taiwanese stories” as a viable career. In 1995, he wrote and directed a seven-minute short film titled Duo Da as a self-recommendation for an assistant position with Edward Yang (A Brighter Summer Day). That self-introduction in the language of cinema was one of the most representative attempts of his early career.¹

Coming from an engineering background, his sensitivity to staging, visual language, and timelines came from years of observation on film sets rather than formal film-school training. This “unorthodox path” may also be one reason he later proved able to break from the conventions of Taiwanese cinema.

Seediq Came Before Cape No. 7

Wei Te-sheng’s desire to make Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale predated Cape No. 7 by more than a decade. In 2000, he spent NT$500,000 of his own money to shoot a five-minute proof-of-concept short for Seediq Bale, then carried it around in search of financing. No one was willing to invest.¹

Taiwan’s film-investment environment told him that the subject was a commercial dead end. His choice was to first make a film that could attract the market, then use the trust it earned to secure the chance to film the Wushe Incident. Cape No. 7 was the execution of that strategy.

This logic of “first opening the road, then walking the road he wanted to walk” is a key to understanding Wei’s career. He was not a director who “happened to make a hit film,” but a person with a clear long-term goal who reached it strategically.

2008: Cape No. 7 and Approximately NT$530 Million at the Box Office

In 2008, Wei Te-sheng wrote, directed, and independently assembled financing for Cape No. 7, using NT$5 million in borrowed money as the initial production budget and combining a contemporary love story with historical memory from the Japanese colonial period.² During production, nearly all of his friends were pessimistic; some told him outright, “You will definitely have to run away.” His response was: “I think I filmed it very well.”⁵

After its release, the film set a Taiwanese box-office record of approximately NT$530 million (P0 confirms “over NT$100 million”; NT$530 million is a commonly cited figure in existing materials, and the Taiwan Creative Content Agency should be consulted to confirm the precise number).² The figure broke the historical record for locally produced Taiwanese films and renewed audience confidence that “Taiwanese stories can be told well.”

📝 Curator’s note: Behind the “miracle” of Cape No. 7 was a premise that is easily overlooked: Wei Te-sheng himself faced enormous financial pressure. Had the box office failed, he would have personally shouldered a vast debt. He made the wager without any safety net. That makes the line “Only those who believe can see miracles” not cheap, outdated motivational broth, but a literal description of the situation.⁵

2011: Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale: Venice Competition, Golden Horse Best Feature Film

The success of Cape No. 7 gave Wei Te-sheng access to production funding that would previously have been impossible. In 2011, he directed Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (released in two parts, The Sun Flag and The Rainbow Bridge), based on the 1930 Wushe Incident, in which Taiwan’s Indigenous Seediq people resisted Japanese colonial rule. Its production budget was approximately NT$700 million, more than one hundred times the production cost of Cape No. 7.³

The film was selected for the main competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Lion (not the Berlin Film Festival or the Busan Film Festival).³ That same year, it won Best Feature Film at the 48th Golden Horse Awards.⁴

(Note: Some materials incorrectly identify the festival as Berlin or Busan; the P0-confirmed Venice main competition should be treated as authoritative.)

When discussing his interpretive perspective on the Wushe Incident, Wei Te-sheng once said: “When people interpret the Wushe Incident, most stand from the perspective of the Japanese or the Han Chinese. No one has ever stood from the perspective of a man on the battlefield.” He wanted to film Indigenous pride: “Han Chinese people often say they want to help them, but they have never tried to understand their pride.”⁵ This perspective is the central contribution of Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale to film history: it gave the Wushe Incident its first mainstream cinematic narrative truly belonging to a Seediq point of view.

The Taiwan Trilogy Epic Project

After Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, Wei Te-sheng conceived the more expansive Taiwan Trilogy project, planned as three films presenting different periods of Taiwanese history, from seventeenth-century Dutch rule to the Ming-Zheng period and the Qing dynasty, with an estimated total budget exceeding NT$4.5 billion.⁵ He also proposed the “City of Abundance” theme-park project, intended to recreate seventeenth-century Taiwanese historical scenes through immersive experience.

The project faces immense financial pressure and execution challenges. Wei has publicly said that if Taiwan Trilogy can truly be completed, he would be willing to fully explain these twenty-five years of his filmmaking path. Behind that sentence lies a director’s final wager on his own “belief.”⁵

Wei Te-sheng’s entire path can be summarized in one sentence: “Only those who believe can see miracles!”⁵ From the NT$5 million loan for Cape No. 7, to the NT$700 million budget for Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, to the NT$4.5 billion concept for Taiwan Trilogy, each step has been harder than the last, and at every step he has kept going.

His Place in Taiwanese Film History

Before Wei Te-sheng, locally produced Taiwanese films had nearly disappeared from the market. The artistic achievements of the “Taiwan New Cinema” generation, including Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang, had received international recognition, but the box office had long remained weak, and theater screens had largely yielded to Hollywood and Hong Kong films.

Cape No. 7 was not merely the success of a single film. It convinced Taiwanese audiences that “Taiwanese stories are worth watching,” and it also convinced investors that “Taiwanese films can be made.” This structural shift became the precondition for a later group of Taiwanese commercial films to take shape.

Seen from this angle, Wei Te-sheng’s significance in Taiwanese film history has two layers: one is the work itself, namely the artistic and commercial achievements of Cape No. 7 and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale; the other is that he changed how Taiwanese audiences and film investors imagined “local cinema.” That is the longer-term influence.⁵

The common account is that his films are “miracles,” accidents produced by a fortunate convergence of timing, place, and people. Another reading is this: behind that accident was one person spending a full twenty years walking the path of “first make a short film → seek funding → fail → shift to a smaller subject → exchange a small success for larger funding.” Miracles are often the longest contingency plan.

There are no shortcuts in film. From the electrical engineering department of a junior college in Yongkang to the main competition at Venice, Wei Te-sheng has used only one method: keep believing, and keep walking.

Born in Yongkang, Tainan, in 1969; unable to find funding after spending NT$500,000 in 2000 to shoot five minutes; NT$530 million at the box office in 2008; Venice main competition in 2011: this line is not a miracle. It is endurance.

Further reading: Wei Te-sheng — Wikipedia ｜ Taiwan Cinema Database: Wei Te-sheng ｜ Golden Horse Awards official website

References