Wugu and Wenzaizun are infamous for thousands of illegal buildings, environmental nightmares, and extremely poor living conditions. As part of the Taiwanese Urban Renewal Project, the government had to relocate nearly 1 million residents to reconstruct these cities. Although residents recognize the dangers and unsustainable living conditions, they were reluctant to leave their homes.

A traditional government policy campaign wouldn’t connect with residents to sway public opinion in favor of the rebuilds and relocation. Instead, we leveraged local insights to create two films that connected with the residents with empathy and understanding.

EP.1 Yesterday And Tomorrow

Insight: The swing between past and tomorrow

Facing the upcoming relocation, the childhood sweethearts who grew up together started a conversation about yesterday and tomorrow. The boy, always looking back , symbolizes yesterday; the girl, always looking forward, symbolizes tomorrow. In the film, through the girl's hand-drawn book, we preserve the collective memory of the land forever.

EP.2 The Beginning of After

Insight: Impossible to change

A father and son, living a life of self-deception, do not believe they are capable of change until they both pick one thing to start with. This story reflects the plight of the Wugu Garbage Mountain.

Instead of policy publicity campaign, we adapt two stories about change based on real local interviews. Used residents’ interviews to inform and leverage the power of entertainment to connect with empathy and understanding required to get people on board with leaving their homes.

The Stories of Change series invited an award-winning movie director and young, talented actors to participate. Using real interviews with residents, we discovered two unique insights for change

Insight 1 The swing between past and tomorrow

Insight 2 Impossible to change

and created two youthful films to evoked people's longing for the future.

EP.1 Yesterday And Tomorrow

EP.2 The Beginning of After

We hope The Stories of Change series can comfort and encourage residents, make them move forward and pursue better future.

Dispensing with traditional propaganda, after the film series went online, we set a new record for the number of positive discussions in government ads.

3,000,000 views within a week, 110k likes, and 24% increase in NTCG’s Governance Satisfaction.

Rebuilding a city involves not only tangible buildings but also intangible emotions.

To make people change, we need a special kind of courage, called LOVE.