For the 2009 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Taiwan’s entry is a much understated, emotionally subtle offering that may just make it to the top – if not for the penchant of the Academy voters, as other countries’ films tackles big historical and national themes and problems.

Long-time actor Leon Dai’s second feature directorial effort though, hits the right notes by focussing on a more pressing and even internationally-relevant issue – the lives of the very poor and uneducated, and their lack of place in society.

No Puedo Vivir Sinti is a fine piece of cinema telling the tale of a father and daughter who squat in an abandoned warehouse by a wharf in Kaohsiung. As the girl reaches schooling age, the child services department begin to separate the duo and while the wheels of the state bureaucracy grinds them underfoot.

It could be that they are squatters, or that the father is poor, illiterate, irregularly employed, and not too bright, leaving him vulnerable to degradations by state processes. No Puedo Vivir Sinti demonstrates clearly why the poor tends to be a permanent underclass, hence contributing to the high levels of drama.

Unlike lesser directors, Leon Dai wisely avoids turning the drama knob to 11, adopting the approach of neorealist cinema and believing that a straightforward, unimpassioned telling will bring out the emotional truths more than any melodrama. As is the case, the stark black and white cinematography and the cast of non-professional actors brought out the real conditions of everyday hardship for the chronically poor, living almost invisible lives in advanced industrial nations, and whose interactions with the normal world are filled with fear and despair.