We Have Boots

“Through the human faces of some key participants, in We Have Boots I’ve tried to show Hong Kong’s traumatizing journey during the last few years that led up to this moment. And I hope the film will spur audiences to think about the universality of western values, global solidarity, and the meaning of the rise of China in this age of polarizing global capitalism.”—Evans Chan

Hong Kong is in the position of being both postcolonial and colonized, but the tenacious democratic aspirations of this semi-autonomous Chinese city astonished the world in the campaign for universal suffrage and human rights known as the Umbrella Movement of 2014, and again in the recent conflicts that drew two million people into the streets in 2019. Then the world moved on. In this essential film, veteran director Evans Chan puts us back in the center of the action in harrowing street footage and in affecting portraits, in their own words, of the movements’ intellectual leaders and street combatants: determined, articulate, funny, less vulnerable than their masked or fresh faces would imply. They face imprisonment, exile, loss of positions, political disqualifications, and police repression for their beliefs. But the future is theirs: the democracy movement may morph, but it won’t die. In the words of one movement founder, “Don’t think because you imprison all the roosters the sun won’t rise.”