Gaku: One Last Round – Taige Shi Interview

12th June 2025

Gaku: One Last Round – Taige Shi Interview. By Joe Muldoon.

The film premiered at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival – how have you found the reception so far?

The LAAPFF was a wonderful experience, and I’m glad that VC communication has provided me this opportunity to premiere my film over there at the DGA theater here in LA. The reception was generally really positive. Many audience members walked up to me after the screening, sharing their own experience about the legal and immigration systems here and showing their empathy towards Gaku. What’s really surprising is that the California AG Rob Bonta was there at the screening as well. He also expressed his positive opinions towards the film. It was a great night for the film and the crew.

Has Gaku seen the short yet? What does he feel about it?

I haven’t sent the final version of the film, but the picture lock version to him. He seemed positive about the portrait of him in the film. I’m planning to reach out to him again soon and see if the film’s success and help him in any kind of way.

From your first meeting and hitting it off, how did you go about convincing Gaku to give permission to make this?

Well, it is not an easy task. The idea of making a film didn’t even come to my mind at that moment. I just wanted to know his story and get to know him as a fellow boxer. It was after the second meeting that I mentioned to him that maybe we could make a film together and potentially use it to help him with his situation. Of course, he was hesitant, and he didn’t accept it on the spot. But after a couple more hangouts and getting to know me more as a person, he finally called me and agreed to the project. He later told me that we earned his trust by showing our true selves to him.

Isolation and alienation are two of the central themes, and through the medium of film, you’ve been able to bring Gaku’s strife to the public’s consciousness; have other immigrants facing the same issues come forward to share their own stories with you?

I do know some other immigrants who are facing similar issues in different communities here in LA. I haven’t decided what I want to do with their stories. But at this very moment, with all the civil unrest happening in the city, I do feel like as a society we need to come together and show our compassion towards each other. And I hope that stories like Gaku’s can be a wake-up call to the public.

The creative team is largely made up of Asians; did their own stories and experiences living in America influence the making of your short?

Definitely! We as a team understand the feelings that Gaku has gone through because we all had similar backgrounds and experiences. Some of us also went through discriminatory incidents in the past, so we understand the vulnerable feelings that one can have under these circumstances. It is also very easy for our team to communicate with Gaku off-camera and just get to know him more as a person rather than just a “subject”.

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