Watch: Hugely Successful Taiwanese Queer Film 'Your Name Engraved Herein' On Netflix

Arriving on Netflix late last month was "Your Name Engraved Herein," the Taiwanese queer film that is "the biggest success of Asian LGBT cinema of the year 2020," writes the French LGBTQ website T�TU. Directed by Patrick Kuang-Hui Liu, the film has been the most successful of the two-dozen-or-so LGBTQ-themed films made in Taiwan. "Earlier in December," TIME Magazine writes, "the movie surpassed NT$100M (around US$3.5M) and is one of only two domestic films to reach this marker in 2020."

Liu's film is set in 1987, while Taiwan was just to slip from the grip of martial law. It would take decades for the gradual liberalization of Taiwanese culture to take place, which culminated last year when the nation becoming the first in Asia to legalize same sex marriage. But at the time when the film takes place, homophobia ruled and LGBTQ people ostracized.

The story focuses on two high school band students – Chang Jia-Han (nicknamed A-Han and played by Edward Chen) and Wang Birdy (Jing-Hua Tseng) who fall for each other. "The film explores the difficulty of admitting and coming to terms with one's sexual orientation in a country in full transition," writes T�TU.

A-Wan story reflects the real one of Liu. "Originally, my intention wasn't to make a gay film, it was to make a personal film," the director told TIME. "This is about my first love, and my first love happened to be a story of a boy liking another boy."

Liu drew upon real-life incidents (such a being in the school band where he played the flute, not the trumpet as A-Wan does), and some invented ones. In one of the film's more piercing scenes, A-Wan confronts a priest about the Church's teachings on homosexuality. "During the process of writing the script, what I thought was that no one can play the role of God and judge people for their gender or who they want to love," Liu, who grew up in a Christian household, told TIME. "We are not God so we don't have the right to be like him and tell Adam and Eve, you are naked and sinful."

Liu also offered a nod to real-life Taiwanese LGBTQ icon in a scene where A-Han and Birdie "meet a Taiwanese posing in the middle of the street in a wedding dress made of condoms with a sign reading 'homosexuality is not a disease' before being violently arrested by the police.

"This activist really exists," T�TU writes, "his name is Chi Chia-wei. In its annual ranking of the 100 most influential people on the planet, TIME magazine published a portrait of Chia-wei signed by the president of Taiwan herself, Tsai Ing-Wen."

"We wanted to put that segment into the film to pay tribute to what he has done all these years," Liu said, even recreating his condom costume. "Our costume designer simply replicated the outfit," Liu said, "and the character actually protested on the site where he protested in the past."

Liu began making the film in 2018 just as Taiwan was in a divisive debate over same sex marriage. In November of that year LGBTQ rights was rejected by the general population voted to restrict marriage to a union between a man and a woman and against implementing LGBT education at schools. The following year, same sex marriage was made legal through the legislative process. For Liu, the victory is bittersweet, saying that he feels that it has come too late for people from his generation (born in the 1970s). Many were not able to catch what he calls the "train of happiness." "I would like to highlight some of the unfortunate stories that may have come too early so they didn't get to see the celebration that we see today,"

And with the film now reaching a wide audience on Netflix, Liu looks forward to his film having a social and political impact. "I hope viewers can understand the feelings of heartfelt affection and heartbreak of the LGBTQ community which are just as sensitive as anyone's," T�TU quotes the director. " I hope to start a discussion in Asia. My hope is to erase discrimination and heal the world with more love and acceptance."