On Making 'Walk The Line', An Epic About Chinese Migrants And The Human Spirit - Free Websites, Share News And Posts Publicly

After the documentary One Way, I was at a loss. The series about Fiona and her family moving from Hong Kong to England was popular; strangers would recommend it to me not knowing that I’d made it.

But I couldn’t help think: Maybe that was it. That was the pinnacle of my documentary career. How would I ever find something or someone so compelling again as a subject?

Around mid-2022, as I mindlessly flipped through Kuaishou, the poor cousin of TikTok, I started seeing videos of Chinese people – often families with young children – traversing a dense jungle in Latin America called the Darien Gap. I began to think this could be something big.

I would love to tell you that I jumped on it right away. Instead, I sat on it for almost year. It seemed a herculean task: To make this documentary, we’d have to cross a few narco-states in South and North America; cross the Darien Gap, which until recently was no man’s land; and deal with people who were unlikely to be thrilled by our presence. And what if I didn’t find another Fiona?

All the while, more and more Chinese migrants joined the journey. When I looked again in September 2023, a few thousand were arriving in the US every month. I knew I would regret for the rest of my life if I didn’t go for it.

Ten months later, we can now present to you the 3-part documentary, Walk the Line, as well as a special behind-the-scenes episode that reveals on what our crew went through.

The series has tension, danger, heartbreak, but also moments of great elation. Viewers tell us watching the journey of our central profile family made them cry, but also made them laugh.

And I think that’s such a beautiful thing – that in the darkest moments of their life, Mum, Dad and Lucy still radiated kindness, optimism and humour – the kind of human spirit that is a documentary maker’s dream.

Wei Du

Director & Producer, Walk The Line

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