Movie releases. "Gangs of Taiwan": a stylized and relentless debut film where silence reigns.

Keff's Gangs of Taiwan is a cinematic shock. Ultra-violent, stylized, and relentless, this debut feature follows the tradition of the gang film, but it also departs from it, exploring a particular motif: silence. It is both a law of organized crime and, metaphorically, a social state imposed by the underworld, the political and economic elites, forming a powerful inner circle.

Young Zhong-Han (Liu Wei Chen) is the perfect embodiment of this law. Mute from birth, he has no ability to betray—and that's what makes him so useful. In this, Keff presents a tragic figure: the ideal man for a mafia system, incapable of breaking the loyalty pact. He is literally the perfect tool of omerta.

In any criminal organization, omerta, more than a code, is a necessity. Say nothing, see nothing, hear nothing - this unwritten rule structures power relations, guarantees the survival of the clan and imposes a form of hushed terror. In Gangs of Taiwan , this law of silence is embodied by this young mute, both victim and guarantor of the system.

Keff's direction reflects the character, drawn into a general silence: dialogue is rare, emotions are contained, gestures are slowed down. Zhong-Han, withdrawn into his own inner darkness, ends up embodying the very logic of the mafia: a world based on dissimulation, secrecy, and self-effacement.

Keff, through his silent hero, portrays a youth muzzled by a system based on mute obedience. Zhong-Han needs neither voice nor shouts to embody this generation crushed by a Taiwanese society where speech—true, political, and protest speech—no longer circulates. His silence is a symbol of total alienation—not only social, but moral.

As in Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo (2001), the youth of Gangs of Taiwan wander through spectral nights and clubs saturated with artificial light. Keff seems to be taking on the Taiwanese master's nocturnal visions: strobe lights, floating tracking shots, absent faces. Keff goes further in despair: for him, there is no other way out than violence and savage crimes. Zhong-Han, his gaze vacant, is dispossessed even of the illusion of a future. Love, the only possible escape, gradually slips away—through his broken relationship with a young girl played by Rimong Ihwar, a luminous figure. Each shot suggests the lockdown of a world that imposes silence—by fear, by hierarchy, by weapons.

Gangs of Taiwan by Keff, in theaters this Wednesday, July 30. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.