American Thought Leaders - The Movie Beijing Doesn’t Want You to See | Yan Ma

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Canadian-Chinese filmmaker Yan Ma knew from the outset that he was putting himself at risk for making a political thriller about a lab leak in China. “The Unrestricted War” is a movie that was inspired by the cover-up and outbreak of COVID-19 and spotlights how the Chinese Communist Party coerces its citizens, and even foreigners living within China, to achieve its ends.Officials pressured Ma’s family members back in China in attempts to coerce him to stop the project. His Chinese team members faced similar pressure. Ethnically Chinese actors refused to participate in the film for fear of the Chinese regime targeting them, ruining their careers, or threatening their families. The actor cast as the lead of the project abruptly backed out just three days before filming, leaving Yan and his casting director scrambling to audition a new lead.In this episode, we dive into some of the extraordinary challenges Yan and his team faced to make this movie a reality, and why he feels it was all worth it.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

My producer, Sophia, they tried to recruit her to be a spy before she leaves the country. Yang Ma is the director of the new feature film, The Unrestricted War, a thriller inspired by the events surrounding the outbreak of COVID-19. What they did after that turn a crisis, a public health crisis, to a global disaster. In this episode, he reveals some of the incredible challenges they face to make this film. Sometimes we shot up on the set, and the owner suddenly gets scared. Oh, this is going to put me in danger. Three days before filming, you auditioned a new lead for the film?

Yeah. Yeah, that's called pretty. It was, yes. His own family members in China were threatened by the Chinese communist regime. They cut some of my family members' income. They cut their paycheck. Like the convenience store next to my house, and I mean, back to the store actually turned into a secret Chinese PlayStation. Yeah, it's ironic to me.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick. Jan Ma, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me. You've made an really, really excellent film, but there were some moments where you were wondering to yourself that maybe this film won't be made at all. And I want to get you to tell me about them. I'm talking about the ones that are not typical.

to most movies. As a Chinese Canadian filmmaker, we kind of knew this from the very beginning of the production. There will be many challenges and even real-life risks because many of our team members are from China including myself.

So my family members face a lot of pressure from the the local government, the Chinese government. And... Wait, okay, wait a sec. Explain this to me. How did, at what point did they experience pressure? After I started the projects, they were called

to the, a garment office. And then when they get there, they realized they actually was led to, what they called a national security office. So they have the officers in there tell them that everything have consequences. So basically, the issue is threat to them, right? And then later, they cut some family members' income.

They cut their paycheck. So that's like at the beginning of the project. So it's almost two years. It's still time. So how did they know that you were making this film just at the beginning of the project? We don't have concrete evidence, but we know they have informants everywhere, right? They can, like, whatever we do, they are closely watching, so they will know right away.

And it's surprising. Many instances I experienced before, like, we decided to do something. And right away next week, someone from a team, like, just got noticed from the national security. And they know right away. We don't even know how they learned that. Because a lot of those discussions happen with a closed door. It's a close story discussion. So yes, but we did experience many of this kind of situation.

I mean, what do you do when this happens? Do you, like, are you talking to CSIS or the local police? And CESIS, of course, being the intelligence service in Canada or the RCMP, the national police? Like, I didn't. Like, I don't, I don't think there's anything they can do because obviously it's like a foreign, it's a government operation, right? This is the strange thing about the Chinese Communist Party because they treat this kind of instance as, like, enemy of the states, right?

So it's on a different level. For us, like, if they wanted to treat us as political criminals, like, it's not really something, a foreign place can help us. The only thing I can do is just comfort my family because it's been a lot of pressure, obviously, and very upsetting situation. Yeah, Jan, you know, I'm going to harp on this a little bit longer. I think that, for example, you know,

we get cyber-attacked a lot here at epoch times. I mean, extremely often by any standard. And I remember some years ago, I was telling someone this, you know, I was, I basically was saying, yeah, we get cyber attacked, you know, weekly. It's pretty, and they're like, they looked at me, he said, you get cyber attacked weekly? I said, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. That's unbelievable, right? And I realized I just had gotten so used to it that it sort of seemed normal, like in a free society that's not normal, right? And what you're describing to me, right? I mean, this is, you know, completely unacceptable behavior by a foreign actor, right? But I think I'm getting in the sense that it's just become so normalized. Yeah. That the Chinese Communist Party we're talking about here, you know, it's interfering in just your activities of one filmmaker that, for you,

you know, I don't even know what I can do here to talk to the police or intelligence. I mean, and this is, if I may, right, this is what your film's about. It's kind of like us, experience, yeah, unrestricted warfare in real life. Yeah, it feels that way, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, explain to me the genesis of this film, right? You know, this film is inspired by the pandemic, right? So I just feel like it's important to reflect on what happened, really, what really happened, especially at the beginning of the outbreak.

So I think that we need to see how, that's why, like, in the film, I mainly show all the antagonists, like, use their power to manipulate people and censor information, basically like weaponized the crisis and eventually lead it to a global pandemic. So I just feel like it's very important to shine a light on this, because this may happen again and if we next time if we have something like much more deadly than COVID I would say like we may not have a second chance so I feel like yeah it's a it's a it's important for us to talk about it and also like we feel a responsibility to do it too because there are like so many Chinese people around the world has become victims of this event and so many people like

or blamed for this because there's a lot of increase like Asian hate because people don't understand the difference between Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party because Chinese people they are actually the biggest victims of all this so yeah so this film is also I hope that we can this film can shine a light on that too so there's Chinese people are actually like victims just as everyone else it is just the system itself the authoritarian system is the one to blame there are so many like brilliant filmmakers in China it just but they just simply don't have the freedom to do this kind of film so for me like as a filmmaker like living in Canada I just feel

yeah I'm I guess I just have to do it so there's this chilling moment in the film And I think it's incredibly important because it does relate to what happened during the actual pandemic where the People's Liberation Army General, who seems to be running the bio-weapons, you know, biosecurity bio-weapons programs for the CCP, basically says, you know, never let a good crisis go to waste, in essence, and, you know, basically, you know, send this out to the world. And this is an important point that I'd like to remind people of that, you know, however the pandemic exactly began, whether it was, you know, lab leak, intentional, there's all these theories about how it all, you know, happened from the beginning. What's certain is that movement inside China was locked down, but there was this vociferous, you know, attempt to prevent the stopping of any international movement from happening. So this was this weaponization.

There's no question there was weaponization there of the pandemic. And then you show that actually, show that actually happening. Yeah, absolutely. I believe so. We did many researchers, research about this. And yeah, we are confident that it's not easy to find the information behind this subjects, especially on the Chinese inside of China. They did a lot of cover-up.

But we know that this instance actually reported very early. I watched the interview. Now it's probably gone. But I watched the interview, a very early interview by the doctor who she first discovered, they called the patient's error, old couple And then she reported it, but, you know, they didn't take a proper reaction to it.

So that's one I'm saying, like, yes, there's all kinds of possibility. We may never know, because since the CCP is still there, we don't know what happened. But definitely what they did after that turn a, I think, turn a crisis, a public health crisis to a global. disaster. Well, something that was also very important. There's this whole kind of idea over the last several decades in the West that if we invest enough in China, if we, you know, give all our money, we give all our intellectual property, we kind of ignore the theft of it, we ignore this sort of asymmetrical relationship, we support them kind of almost like a martial plan type situation, they'll become more like us, right? And I think that there's something that is portrayed

repeatedly in your film, which is very powerful, which is how essentially the way that the decisions have made, the public health questions are completely, you know, sidelined and that that interaction happens multiple times with different people. It's an incredibly important idea. And my concern is that that mentality, where the political consideration in a totalitarian communist regime, that's always the case that that has rubbed off on us in the West, because we saw some, a lot of decision making that was clearly political, that wasn't public health oriented during the pandemic. You know, and it took us a while even to figure out that that was the case, because it was so shocking that people would make decisions that way.

As someone who grew up in China, I actually understand how they behave, how they use their power to control people. They built this systematic brainwash system and the propaganda. propaganda is all for one purpose is to gain their power, keep everything under their control. When the free world try to do business with them, I mean they can take this opportunity and use it for their own political purpose. So the benefit never really goes to the people. And even it does go to the people, they were propaganda and brainwash the people, make them feel like, oh, it's actually because the

benevolence of the party make all this happen. So they were used their propaganda to control people's mind. And I guess this staying in power, this feeling is very attractive to human nature. That's why when a lot of, I guess, the government or politicians in the West feel like the way that Chinese government operate is so efficient, so efficient that they can just get things down real quickly. But at the cost of the value that we believed in, you know, and we all know what happened in the past decades.

This eventually will lead us to a bigger disaster. So there is a thing in Chinese, you get a sesame seeds and you lost the watermelon. So that's how I see it. Yes, it's probably, it's powerful, it's efficient, but we actually lost the most important thing and the ultimate purpose of why we're doing this. Actually in the long run, it's going to hurt the people in public. I want to go back to some of the irregularities that happened around your film, and I understand that, like, just a few days before you actually started production, before you started filming, you lost, like, the protagonist, the main character in the film. So just tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah, that was a very tough situation because, yeah, so like three days before the shoot, our lead actors,

Our lead actors, they received a lot of pressure, too, from their family and friends. The lead actor got really worried because he really believed that he will get harmed by the Chinese government. And one day, in the middle of the night, he got a phone call, and there was nobody speaking on the other end. And it's just really scared him. And the next day, he just told us that I have to leave. I have to go back, I have to go home. This kind of thing is, it's like, it never happened in film industry because, like, the wardrobe are prepared for him,

and it just created a, it put us in a very difficult spot, right? And so we had to find a new actor and basically start over three days before. So this is kind of a challenge we are facing during the production. It happens a lot, right? this kind of thing. So, yeah, it's real. I mean, this fear, this effect of CCP in the Western world, they're real.

We felt it throughout the whole production. It's not something like we felt it's so far away. It's not far away. Well, so something worked out because your lead actor here, Dylan Bruce, is, you know, nails it from my perspective. How did you find in three days the right, I mean, it seems like the perfect casting, I mean, to me. Yeah, Dylan did a fantastic job, absolutely.

Yeah, casting director, after we tell her the news, like, she freaked out. Because again, like, this kind of thing is really rare in the film industry. And like, she basically worked 24-7 just to get us a new lead, yeah. It's a brand new, we did everything. We started over, right?

So it's audition and everything. Let me get this straight, okay? Three days before filming, you auditioned a new lead for the film? Yeah. Yeah, that's called crazy it was, yes. And it worked somehow. Yeah, it worked, yeah. Because once three days, once they started the shooting, you can't change it.

Once you schedule the days, you have to do it. So yeah, we just work. work around the clock to fix the problem, I guess. But yeah, this is saying that during the production, that this is a situation we have to face. Sometimes we shot up on a set, and the owner suddenly gets scared. I said, oh, this is, I think it's going to put me in danger

and I'm not going to rent you this set anymore. This kind of situation, we run into all the time. I mean, this is really astonishing. I mean, even, you know, we're talking to someone who's quite aware of the Chinese communist regime's influence activities in America. We cover this on the show quite often. But what you're describing just as a practical reality, right, is astonishing. And again, I mean, I think clearly your film is called the unrestricted war. you're what happened to you is you know in the name of the film in the production there's a

kind of an interesting I think the young people these days call that meta it's kind of unbelievable in a way ironically I have you know there last year or two years ago they have this PlayStation oversea PlayStation from the Chinese government established in North America actually got one of this like right in my neighborhood like one minute walk from my house because I was watching on the map

like you know from the news they showed where all the stations the PlayStation are and I say oh one of them is actually right in front of my house is in the convenience store in the back of the convenience store just remind me about

what these you know CCP overseas police stations are what is that actually Basically, it's like, so CCP, they send us this news to all the Chinese people outside the country. They said they're establishing this PlayStation overseas, so all the Chinese citizens can go there and basically providing information. Like, if they see anyone doing anything that will harm China or doing anything that, you know, make the government look bad, you can just go to this PlayStation and report them. And they have oversee operators will help. I don't know exactly how they will help, but this is, yeah, this is how far they reached, right, in the Chinese community.

Again, sort of, you know, we hear about the China. police stations and so forth, but you don't, you know, it doesn't hit home when, it hits home a lot more when it's one minute away from your home and you're making a film that's critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Yes. Right? It feels unreal. It's like the convenience store next to my house and, I mean, the back to the store actually

turn into Chinese police station, a secret Chinese police station. That's, yeah, it's ironic to me. As you told me earlier, your relatives have been threatened. They've had their pay cut because of your work. What do you think they're trying to accomplish with that? Well, obviously they wanted to put pressure on me, just stop whatever I'm doing. But to me, I think the best way to react to this is do even more, because you can back down. Once you back down, they know they have you in their pocket.

They know that this works. They will just go worse. If this film becomes big, and I think it really has the potential to, you've made a really powerful film here, aren't you worried that it might have greater repercussions on your family back home? Yes, all the time. It really is like, especially to me, I'm, like, I'm as Chinese, this. This kind of thing really can impact us a lot.

But I don't think I can walk away, and my conscience won't allow me to do that firstly. And then secondly, if I stop because of this, then they know, oh, this works for him. They won't stop. They will just do more. I experienced many of these kind of cases from my friends. they all experienced this before, right? There was the first time, they're always a second time. They will go to your family again, but this time,

they will say, OK, we need you to do this for us. Otherwise, your family is going to be in trouble again. So they slowly turn you to work for them. This is how, you know, for someone that doesn't have the bottom line, they can, yeah. This is how they manipulate people. It's like, again, that's Chinese, like, someone grew up there I knew all their tricks very well yeah and I mean again

this is of course shown in various ways you know with the with the Canadian family right I mean I'm not going to give away some of the plot twists but but let's talk about unrestricted war okay of course in this instance I think the unrestricted war is using the virus as a weapon in effect right again whatever the origin was to basically, you know, affect the West in a very negative way, right? And, you know, which is actually what happened in reality. I mean, the whole, you know, kind of the whole economy was closed down ultimately, right? And certainly that decision on the CCB side played a role in that, whatever the total

decision making was. Tell me a little bit more about other realms of this unrestricted war. And all of these, to be honest, I just feel it's everywhere because we are so closely connected to China in so many ways. I give you a fun example. Like all the international students, right? I came to Canada as international students. And my producer, too, Sophia, and she was,

sent to Canada as a student study, right? And she actually was recruited. They tried to recruit her to be a spy before she leaves the country. That really happens to her. And she said, of course, she said no, she refused. But even for all the, for the normal student, that you decided to go to a different country, and then you were approached by a Chinese spy agency,

spy agency to, you know, for this kind of test. for this kind of task. I'm just giving you an example like this to show that to them, it's really there's no boundaries, like they do anything necessary to get what they want. Like right now we have so many Chinese internet influencers, even platforms, and like it filled with their ideology

and propaganda even. It's really everywhere, including the to know what happened on the street. And the so-called collaboration with the Western companies allow them to do all kinds of commercial espionage. And even many influence that are made on the foreign politicians. So this, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Well, and in Canada, you know, there's pretty strong evidence.

that a number of elected parliament members are, you know, were elected in significant part with CCP money. Yeah, yeah, there's, there's there, yeah, I heard that on the news, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the fentanyl side, you know, the FBI director here in the US, Kash Patel calls it, you know, CCP fentanyl, right? And, you know, we've done a lot of work on this show to explain,

how it is that these precursors are coming in, that the Chinese banks are, you know, sort of helping launder the money, that there's, you know, in the ports, there's, you know, Chinese operators working with the cartels. The pill presses are made in communist China. The fact that, you know, these different companies that sell the precursors basically seemingly operate with no problems, even though the Chinese were using saying, yeah, we're working on it. You know, there's, it's one of these textbook examples of unrestricted war. And because it leads to, I mean, arguably, you know, tens of thousands of military-aged Americans men being wiped off the map.

And in wartime, that's a lot, right? For Chinese government, if they want someone or even some company or some industry to disappear, they can make it overnight. all this civilian system, all this, you know, it's a place state. If they want to do it, they can't just do it very fast. So if they tell us, oh, we can't control those people who whoever sell you this material, that is a lie. That's impossible.

So what has been the response of the film? You've screened it now in a number of places. I just watched it when you screened it in Congress here in Washington, D.C. What has been the reaction of the audiences? The reaction from the audience is actually incredibly good. I'm very happy about it. I think the audience really get the message behind the film. And we tried a few festivals, but we get a response that they are

concern about the topic because some of the very big festivals usually they are very connected to China a lot of filmmakers Chinese filmmakers came every year so they concern that because this happened to them before if they accept our film the Chinese government will ask the rest of the Chinese filmmakers to leave the festival so they will yeah they will suffer a loss so yeah So we experienced this like in Taiwan Film Festival before the Golden Horse. Because it's like they said the same thing.

If we accept you, that means we lose all other Chinese film. Because they are all like the government will just force them to withdraw. You know, it's very interesting. It reminds me there's a really powerful book called The Collaboration. It was written about how Hollywood worked with the Nazi regime in the 1930s to make sure, I believe in the middle

of the 1930s, there was not a single film made critical of Nazi Germany, even though these extreme anti-Semitic policies were already kind of being put in place, not just anti-Semitic, there were all sorts of red flags, but Hollywood basically didn't notice, even though there were filmmakers who wanted to make those films, right? We also know that. There's an eerie parallel here. That's just happens for, it's normal for a culture market, right? Sometimes, even including the Holocaust, in the beginning, when the Nazi regime still there, before they were defeated, it's like no one believed it.

Same thing, it reminds me about the organ harvesting, too. I don't know if you, you're probably familiar with the topic. When we first heard about it, it was just like, that was 2003, 2004, very early. And, but yeah, but not all of this gradually. I mean, the culture products are picking that up. I hope that will make a difference, because it is important, because this is what opened people's mind. So they want to do something about it, right? Some news is too shocking.

It's just maybe, yeah, the general public will react to it. react to it very slowly that's why I mean like it's actually a great responsibility for for all the you know filmmakers and writers to to focus on issue like this because it really it can shape opinion for the the public right so they can they can start thinking about this and and here's the thing right I mean in the 30s it wasn't really clear that there would be this you know mass killing of Jews that happened during World War II. It was clear there were these extreme anti-Semitic policies

and the language of genocide language and things like that. And so you're talking about this kind of denying how easy it is for us tonight. Part of it is human nature, I think. Part of it is we don't want to know about some of the darkest things. We don't want to believe that they're happening. I've encountered that, I've discussed this again

on this program in the past. And on the other hand, there's also this aspect where you have to make a sacrifice. You have to make a personal sacrifice, financial or otherwise prestige maybe, in order to publicly accept that a government is doing something terrible and say yes, right? So I guess my question is, why have you chosen

to make this sacrifice? I guess I just, I feel as a response ability, like because most of the Chinese makers, there are so many brilliance filmmakers, they don't have the freedom to do it. And I'm here, at least I can say something. And for the Western filmmakers, for most of them, it's also very difficult for them to do research and like access information, finding information behind the subjects. just almost impossible.

So for me, I guess I feel I have to do it. I'm still lucky, because I'm in here, at least I'm safe, thinking about other people that, like the whistleblowers for the pandemic, right? And think about the human rights lawyers in China and all the Falun practitioners in China. They paid a much higher price for speaking the truth or just have a different voice.

It's tough, but sometimes, you know, you have to do the right thing, I guess, just like the whistleblower in the film. If you don't do it, it's going to be always like this. There's something really beautiful about what you just said. So where can people watch the film? It will be released on Gengjin World Plus. We will release a film on all the major platforms.

including Apple TV and Amazon Prime and YouTube movies. So, yeah, we can find the film all the VOD platforms. Well, and I'll just comment that Gunging World Plus is a partner of the Epoch Times and also, you know, a platform which is committed to no political censorship. And so this is a big reason why I think you're starting there because you don't have to negotiate all of these, you know, kind of difficulties. I mean we find an independent platform is important and I appreciate that Genging world is actually doing that and you see like there's always people you know

decided to do the right thing and we stay together that's that's good we'll make a difference wonderful I don't want to give too much of the plot away but there's something really interesting that happens in the film and that is you know one of the characters at the beginning is feels like you know they have to kind of for a variety of reasons go along with what the regime wants but then later on finds basically some kind of inner strength to resist that again against all odds and it's a very moving and hopeful and and inspiring a moment I guess and I guess what I'm asked what I want to ask you is where do people find that you

I'm sure you've meditated on this. I'm sure you've thought about this. From my personal experience, I've been through all this transformation. I've been through the whole process. I grew up in the communist China. And again, everyone's all brainwashed. And we grew up in the propaganda environment.

We only believe what the party taught us. So that's how most of Chinese people are. Even my family members, a lot of them still have difficulties to believe some stuff I tell them, some information, because they can never see any of this in China, right? So yeah, that's how initially, you know, trans people are confused and they are deceived basically by CCP. And that is what, it's the most terrible thing,

I think, what the Communist Party did. Like they hide behind people and manipulate them and make them turn on each other. Not only Chinese to change, that's what they did for the Cultural Revolution, during the Cultural Revolution, they turned the people on each other. So kids will be their parents, their teachers. And nowadays, like, they become part of the World Academy.

They start turning Chinese people against the American people, make many Chinese people to hate the Japanese hate Americans, hate basically whoever seen bad thing about the Communist Party. So this is how their brainwash system works. And it's very effective, very, very effective. And it's dangerous, very dangerous to me. So to your question, that's actually one of the very big reason I made this film. I actually want Chinese people to see it too.

So I know there's no way to do screening in China ever. But I would try my best to find a way to get the film into China and show you to Chinese people. So let them understand what their government is really doing to them. Because they can access this information. But once we reveal the truth, we reveal the information, like when I first came to North America, I learned a lot of shocking information

is really shocking to me. And then I slowly opened up and I understand, oh, OK, well, I understand what the truth is and what I should do, right? So I think this is always, I guess this is the power about the stories, power about this kind of stories. So we wanted to slowly change, you know, free people from the propaganda. and the brainwash.

Yeah. And eventually, I feel like Chinese people, because they are brave and kind people. I believe in China and Chinese people very much. So I believe there will be a difference in near future. Well, Jan, this film is profound, incredible. I'm going to encourage everybody that's watching to watch it. We're going to finish up now, but I'm going to roll the trailer right after we finish. I encourage our audience to stay and check out the trailer at the end.

And congratulations on an absolutely incredible film. It's been such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you so much. Wipe her from our database and burn the body. Keep this contained while you will join her in the furnace. How'd you even get these numbers? That's a state secret. I'll be charged with espionage.

Then you better consider why not to get caught. We will lose everything in value here in China. They both exhibit high temperature, severe headaches, and I'm most concerned that it might be quite contagious. Why waste a good pandemic, right, General? You have a serious viral outbreak that can threaten the whole world. You mean fake news. We'll never be able to come back to China.

Right now, our safety's what matters most, nothing else. Mama! You saw the chaos in the hospital, right? If the party has a plan, it needs to be better. You think you know better than the party leaders? I need to be with my family. They will remain there to complete your mission. I will not commit a crime against you, man.

The war never ended for us. So to double cross me, Dr. Conrad, is something I cannot allow. Thank you all. Thank you all for joining Yan Ma and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellick.