‘Snakehead’ is a drama film starring Sister Tse, an undocumented Chinese immigrant coming to Chinatown, New York, to look after her daughter but has to first pay $ 50,000 owed to traffickers who brought her to Chinatown. The big Apple. He soon proves to be strong and draws the attention of Dai Mah, the leader of the human trafficking operation and the illegal queen of Chinatown. Sister Tse quickly climbs the ranks to become one of the most trusted employees under Dai Mah.
The latter even considered replacing Sister Tse with her son Rambo. Predictably, this leads to a confrontation between Rambo and Sister Tse. ‘Snakehead’ provides a dark and sad picture of Chinatown’s delicious belly.
Is Snakehead a Real Story?
No, the ‘Snakehead’ is not based on fact; the characters from it and their stories are legends. However, the film finds inspiration in the life of Cheng Chui Ping or Sister Ping, a human trafficker who brought large numbers of undocumented immigrants, especially from Hong Kong to New York City between 1984 and 2000.
Sister Ping was born in the northern Chinese province of Fujian in January 1949 and was a successful businesswoman before starting her smuggling business. She came to the US in 1981 with her husband and children and began living in Chinatown. He began his career as a human trafficker in the early 1980s and gradually became one of the most influential and influential people in the industry. At the start of his career, he was said to be carrying hundreds of people at a time on cargo ships.
Sister Ping was finally arrested in Hong Kong in 2000 and sent back to the US, where she was found guilty of money laundering, human trafficking, and kidnapping, among other things, in June 2005 and sentenced to 35 years in prison in March. 2006. Sister Ping was still working when her health began to decline. She died in April 2014 at the age of 65.
‘Snakehead’ is the first narrative project in the work of author-director Evan Jackson Leong, who has received acclaim as a documentary filmmaker. In various interviews, Leong said he grew up watching films like ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Scarface’ and wanted to make films like these with characters like him.
He also wanted to tell the story of the underworld because he felt that Asians should be twice as good to live in the western hemisphere. That is why he has made the film trafficker the biggest smuggler in New York history. In addition, the protagonist’s underdog made him wonderfully connected with the audience.
Leong reportedly spent 13-14 years developing the project. In the late 2000s, he began talking with various people about what was happening in Chinatown’s most arid regions. Leong met people from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies as well as past and present criminals.
“Snakehead.” He moved to New York in 2009 but did not start production until 2016. In the middle of the day, he gained the trust of these people to open up to him. Clearly, the ‘Serpent’s Head’ is not based on a true story but is freely inspired by one. “Snakehead.”
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