Overview

She is Kao Chu-Hua, a dazzling Latin singer of the 1950s–60s known as “Panana,” and daughter of White Terror victim Kao Yi-Sheng. After her father’s execution, she gave up her dream of studying medicine in the U.S. and turned to singing to support her family. Under authoritarian rule, she was blacklisted, surveilled, and coerced into hosting foreign guests for the regime. Newly declassified archives reveal the full extent of her exploitation. LA PALOMA follows her daughter, Shih Chao-Ling, as she confronts the silence and shame her mother endured. Through family interviews and historical research, the film pieces together one woman’s survival under political oppression—a story that echoes countless untold lives of women under authoritarian regimes.