‘Pierce’ Director Nelicia Low Talks Crystal Globe Win And Making Her First ‘American Film’

Before taking on the global stage winning the Crystal Globe for Best Director at Karlovy Vary for her debut feature, Pierce , Nelicia Low represented Singapore on another international stage — fencing — for several years, including competing at the Asian Games in 2010.

Both her passion for the sport and what Low says is a "lifelong calling" to filmmaking collided in Pierce.

The film follows a high school fencer, Jie, and his relationship with older brother Han. Han is released from juvenile prison after seven years for killing an opponent in a fencing competition under mysterious circumstances.

The worlds of filmmaking and fencing collide

"I actually wanted to be a film director since I was six or seven years old, so way before I started fencing," Low told Deadline. " I wanted to be a fencer because of Star Wars. A lot of people have asked me how I went from fencing to filmmaking, but actually it's the opposite — my journey has been from filmmaking to fencing.

"Singapore is a very practical society but for some strange reason, when I was young, I just sort of knew that I was supposed to do this. In Mandarin, we say 'tianzhi,' which is like, your fate, so for me, it was just a journey of coming to terms with this fate to become a filmmaker," added Low.

The Singapore- Taiwan -Poland co-production stars Liu Hsiu-Fu, Tsao Yu-Ning and Ding Ning.

Magnify, the international sales arm of Magnolia Pictures, has acquired the film's global sales rights.

Nelicia Low was signed to New York-based Gotham Group ahead of Karlovy Vary. Low became the first Singaporean director to have a feature film selected for competition at the festival.

Pierce screened this week at the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan, before its upcoming theatrical release in Taiwan on December 27. The film has also released theatrically in Singapore and will open in cinemas in France.

Low's next film, Duet, will be her debut American film, set in San Francisco, in the world of Cantonese opera in the late 1990s.

With Cantonese opera historically featuring all-male or all-female performing troupes, Low's project follows a female singer who plays a male role in a show while another female singer plays a female role. They end up falling in love, but this jeopardizes their artistic relationship.

"The film is about their relationship and the lines that are blurred between on-stage and off-stage. Closeness is what makes them incredible, but it also leads to a lot of ambiguity," said Low. "I've been writing it for two years."

After Pierce, Low knew that she wanted to make an "American film," in part due to some of the programming limitations she observed while following Pierce on its globe-trotting festival run.

"Pierce is a film that is in between art house and commercial, but in the film festival world, they want East Asian or Southeast Asian films to be totally art house. This has caused a lot of trouble for us. Programmers want to see a certain kind of slow cinema, which is a big part of the reason why the next film, no matter what, I knew I had to do in the States, because I realized that this labeling is not something that I belong to," said Low.

Making her first feature

Her idea for Pierce came in her second year while pursuing an MFA in Film Directing at Columbia University's School of the Arts, in 2014.

It took her five years to finish writing and polishing the script, while working on other short films during that time.

"I had a classmate who told me not to worry if I was stuck, because it takes 10 years for someone to become a real professional at what they do. They told me that then I was only in my third year of being a writer. In a way, they were correct, because by the time that I actually finished the script, it was my seventh year of writing and I was more mature as a writer," Low said.

"Honestly, the jump from making short films to feature films, the major thing is the script. The actual act of directing is similar, just longer and with a lot more people. I didn't find that it was a big jump for me," added Low.

Low said that selecting to work with Polish director of photography Michal Dymek — after talking to "20 to 30 DOPs" — was one of the best choices she made.

Dymek shot EO, The Girl with the Needle as well as A Real Pain, among others.

"When we spoke, I felt that we were similar but also different enough," said Low. "Some cinematographers can be very showy but it takes a really strong and confident cinematographer to know that sometimes it's not all about the cinematography. Sometimes you have to step back, and other things come forward, like the acting and the art direction. Michal is someone like that. He puts the story first."

Initially, Low's and Dymek's schedules for the shoot did not line up, but Low continued the conversation to make the production dates work out.

Low said that Dymek pulled the film through some of the lowest moments she had as a director.

"Michal fought when I couldn't fight anymore," said Low. "He wasn't fighting to finish the film, he was fighting for the quality of the film, which is a very different fight, from just wanting to finish. I was very lucky. How rare do you get someone that, both artistically and as a person, just has so much conviction?"

During a low moment in Taiwan before production began, Low said that she made a phone call to her father, who was living in Singapore.

"I called him and said that I wanted to come home and get a proper job, and he said, 'No, you're not going to. You're going to stay there and you're going to finish the film because even if you come back, you're still going to be a filmmaker.' That really empowered me to stay and I was lucky that on set, I think that the things that I did correctly, were the ones that had to do with artistic choices."

Filming in Taiwan

For a month before the shoot, Low organized rehearsals with actors nearly every day for 12 hours a day.

"My first instinct was to shoot Taiwan, because I had a lot of collaborators there, like one of my art directors, she did my very first short film in Taiwan," said Low. "I was shot my short films in Taiwan, because at Columbia, I had a senior that was Taiwanese, and she wanted to produce a film in Taiwan.

"Funding should come after the story but luckily Taiwan had a lot of funding available. As the script for Pierce developed with the love story and with Taiwan being the first place in Asia to recognize same-sex, if the film was shot anywhere else, it wouldn't have worked. I wanted the love story to be seen as first love, not as gay first love, because for me, that's progressive," said Low.

One of Low's favorite authors is English writer Jeanette Winterson and she pointed out one line in Winterson's 1989 novel Sexing the Cherry that helped to shape ideas around different kinds of love in Pierce: "As your lover describes you, so you are."

The film's screening at the Golden Horse Film Festival marks a full circle moment for Low, as she previously won the Taipei New Horizon Award at the Golden Horse's "Work In Progress" program last year.

Releasing the film

Pierce received its North American premiere at New York Asian Film Festival and has also played at the Busan, Rio de Janeiro, Thessaloniki and Rome film festivals. Actor Liu earned a special mention at the latter. The film also won the grand jury prize at La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival in France.

"People with siblings are the ones that have had the strongest responses, I get messages from people telling me about their siblings and what this film meant to them. It's actually been very similar feedback across all the countries," said Low.

Low also highlighted the unprecedented enthusiasm for her film at Busan, where she spent nearly an hour signing autographs.

"Koreans are so passionate. In Korea, people that go to festivals are true cinephiles. I can speak and write a bit of Korean because I used to train in fencing there and I was very close to one of the girls in the Korean team," said Low.

Low is hopeful about a successful theatrical run for the film in cinemas.

"The next step in the journey for me is to see how the film goes theatrically, which is very different from the festivals. I am anxious and want it to do well, but let's see what happens," said Low.