Documentary tracks Nathan Law's quest for democracy in Hong Kong

Freedom and democracy can vanish quickly if unchecked power is allowed to do whatever it wants, says activist Nathan Law.

As a college freshman, Law led a student boycott demanding Hong Kong be allowed to elect its own leader. When the five days of peaceful civil disobedience turned into the Umbrella Revolution, he was singled out as a revolutionary and became Hong Kong’s youngest elected official. At 26, he was put on the “most wanted” list and considered a threat to the country.

His story — captured in the documentary, “Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law?” — has inspired young people everywhere to look closer at the motives of those in power.

Now living in Great Britain and maintaining a low profile (there’s a $140,000 bounty on his head), he still longs for the kind of freedom that fueled his interest in politics.

“Even though I’m a refugee and a wanted person, I still need to meet up with friends,” he says by satellite. “Maintaining mental well-being is an extremely important topic but most of the time overlooked in activism. We are often portrayed as heroic, willing to put everything at risk for a collective good.”

In truth, Law didn’t want to be political but was pushed to speak out.

“I don’t have the superpower of always being optimistic or free from harm," Law says. "The governments arrested my friends in Hong Kong, harassed my family, broke into my family home and took away my mom and my brother."

“There’s been a lot of trauma,” he adds. “One thing that keeps me sane, keeps me going is that I recognize how important the issue is and the way we fight for it. Everything we do is larger than ourselves.”

The birth of a film

The documentary, which aired on PBS' “POV” earlier in the year and is considered a frontrunner for an Oscar, began when producer Matthew Torne met Joshua Wong, a 14-year-old at his first protest.

“He captivated me with how articulate he was,” Torne says. “I spoke to him, and I spoke to his parents and we started talking about the possibility of a documentary.” That led to “Joshua, Teenager Versus Superpower,” which came out in 2017.

Aligned with Law, Wong introduced him to those in the Umbrella Revolution and, in 2019, two million people came out into the streets.

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“We were like, ‘Wow. OK. The story is not over,’” Torne says. “We always kind of felt the first film was like ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ and, unfortunately, this film was more like ‘The Empire Strike Back,’ in that there’s no happy ending – Joshua is in jail; Agnes Chau, who’s the third key member of this group, has fled, and Nathan is doing his activism in the U.K. as a refugee.”

To complete the film, Torne and company had to rely on friends and other contacts to obtain the necessary material.

Scenes with Law were shot in what looks like an abandoned building.

“We were looking for something that didn’t immediately scream London and that could pass, perhaps, as Hong Kong,” Torne says. “It’s not exactly glamorous but there’s nothing to distract you from him and what he’s saying.”

Law thinks the situation fits the documentary’s theme.

“Protesting is not heroic," Law says. "It’s very rare that I really spill things from the bottom of my heart. Protest is filled with suffering and trauma and failed attempts and unachievable hopes in many instances. I’m a reflection of the movement of Hong Kong. Many people never wanted to protest — not until the Beijing government really forced them and persecuted them to do so. I never wanted to also be a politician.”

Looking ahead

While a third film — a “Return of the Jedi” look at the situation — is possible, Torne doesn’t hold out hope.

“Having said that, authoritarian regimes are notoriously brittle and they look impenetrable but they can collapse overnight,” he says. “We saw that with the end of the Berlin Wall. It’s entirely possible that there could be a time when Nathan and I are able to go back to Hong Kong, when Joshua is out of jail and, who knows? But at the same time I would never want to put a date on when that could happen. Even the best academics don't know."

Meanwhile, the 31-year-old Law continues his efforts.

In China, “there are a lot of problems that are unnoticed or unadvertised on the news,” he says. “We are seeing the People’s Republic of China getting in a lot of trouble in terms of its growth, its economic downturn. We will be witnessing a lot of changes in the next decade or two and maybe some of those changes could lead to a free and democratic Hong Kong and China. The main point is how we can be prepared when it comes.”