The Silent Forest

The feature film adapts real-life events, where in 2011,a special education school in Taiwan was exposed tocovering up 164 incidents of collective sexual assaultand harassment by teachers and students over 8 years.It succeeds in being a candid yet powerful depiction oftrauma, corruption, and the fight for justice, skillfullyhandled by director Ko. Rather than opting for a scathingcondemnation of those involved in the scandal, Ko’sperpective focuses more on the students themselves,uncovering their motives and inner conflict. What madethe students not want to leave school even after beingsexually assaulted? What were the attackers thinkingwhen abusing their classmates? Why did they thinkthis way? These are some points touched upon in thefilm, all explored from the perspective of the studentsthemselves. Ko does not sensationalise the dark details,offering the audience just enough information to graspthe gravity of these events. The film contains someexplicit scenes of sexual violence. The Silent Forest isup-and-coming director Ko Chen-Nien’s debut featurefilm. It was one of the most talked-about films in Taiwanin 2020, being the 6th highest grossing domestic releasemovie of the year. It was nominated in eight categoriesat the Taiwan Golden Horse Awards, and the Taipei FilmFestival, winning several.