Buyers receive first taste of the Chinese diaspora series “Coolie”

Cathay Film Co

Chinese industry executives are getting a first taste of “Coolie,” a big-budget historical miniseries centered on enslaved Chinese workers in 1860s Cuba.

MM2 Entertainment is managing the Chinese rights to the production on behalf of IE Entertainment. The Suharjono sisters’ IE Entertainment is representing the rights in the rest of the world.

After filming in the Dominican Republic and Panama wrapped in April, preliminary footage will be shown to buyers at a special event in Shanghai on Monday. The finished series is not expected to ship until late 2024 or early 2025.

Produced by Meileen Choo’s Cathay Film Company and directed by Arvin Chen (“Love in Taipei,” “Mama Boy”), the film stars Hong Kong actress Louise Wong (“A Guilty Conscience,” “Anita”), who plays a young woman who leaves southern China to marry a political exile working on a sugar plantation in Cuba. In the story, she joins forces with servants and African slaves to gain freedom. But the plantation owner’s spurned wife and her ex-lover conspire against her, setting off a series of intrigues and retaliations that leave Cuba’s fate in the balance.

“I wrote the story of ‘Coolie’ 30 years ago. It tells the story of our ancestors, the overseas Chinese. Few people today recognize the contributions that overseas Chinese have made in so many countries around the world,” said Choo from Singapore. “The narrative foreground is the story of a brave Chinese girl who goes to Cuba to marry a coolie and repay her family’s debts.”

“Despite being such a significant subject, film stories about the Chinese diaspora have become rare in recent years. Many coolies have suffered greatly to bring success and wealth to the world,” said actress Nina Paw, who plays the key role of the young Chinese woman’s grandmother – both a financial burden and a source of wisdom.

In the mid-19th century, when the African slave trade was banned throughout the Americas, plantation owners in Cuba began smuggling indentured servants from China and other parts of Asia instead. These coolies, known as laborers, were often treated like slaves, but some integrated into Cuban society and joined the country’s struggle for independence from Spain. They provided low-cost labor for farms, restaurants and factories and were instrumental in the establishment of Chinatowns around the world.

The 2024 edition of the Shanghai International Film Festival will be held from June 14 to 23. The STVF will be held from June 24 to 28.