Wings for Takasago Giyutai

Wings for Takasago Giyutai, directed by Futuru C. L. Tsai, concerns the young Indigenous Taiwanese men organised by the Japanese military and sent to the Pacific theatre during the Second World War as the Takasago Volunteers. The director travels with the Amis artist Siki Sufin and descendants of the volunteers back to the battlefields of Papua New Guinea, where they build the memorial “Wings for Takasago”, searching for kin who died in a foreign land and bringing a forgotten memory of war back into view.

This is not only a film about war but about Indigenous identity, family memory and the return of the soul. When a pair of wings is carved and raised on a battlefield far from home, what they carry is not only grief for the dead but a historical memory spanning generations, looking for the road home.

Screenings of this film