In this compelling and personal story, filmmaker Vicky Du works to make sense of her family’s history since the 1949 Chinese Communist revolution and her Taiwanese American identity. Archival materials are carefully juxtaposed with introspective family interviews to create an intimate, homespun document of the filmmaker as she and her loved ones come to a shared understanding of their collective journey from past to present. An exacting edit conveys the gravity of their experience while warmly sharing moments of levity. Light of the Setting Sun radically embraces the thorniness of learning to heal in community alongside one’s own family. By stitching herself into the fabric of the film, Du creates an honest and transformative experience of reckoning with cycles of violence, repressed memory, and intergenerational trauma. KR

Filmmaker Q&A following screening