Tiananmen

David B. Ward

About the screenwriter:

David Ward has always been something of a nomad.  At 14, he got lost in the Tetons for two days.  At 19, he moved to Taiwan for two years and learned Mandarin (which is kind of like being lost in the Tetons). 

In his early 20s, he backpacked through China (visiting Tiananmen Square on the tenth anniversary of the June Fourth Massacre) and wandered intellectually from Lu Xun and Li Shangyin to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; from Gandhi and Thoreau to Robert Frost and Cormac McCarthy.  Prior to being a writer and producer, he was a house painter, landscaper, award-winning journalist, and lead commercial counsel on dozens of deals totalling more than US$1 billion.

Having lived in Shanghai, Taichung, Honolulu, and Philadelphia, he’s now put down roots in the shadows of Sundance, Utah with his artist wife and two Bluey-obsessed children.  His screenplay Tiananmen has won numerous accolades, including semi-finalist in the 2023 Austin Film Festival and Overall Top 1% on Coverfly.  His legal scholarship has been cited in books and articles published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and the Chinese Journal of International Law.