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That struggle, with all its geo-strategic implications, is part of Vanessa Hope’s compelling, informative documentary that also recounts Taiwan’s transformation from an authoritarian state to a democracy, a process that, in a way, culminated with Tsai’s election as the first female president in 2016.

Tsai, who left office earlier this year, anchors the film, through interviews and documentation of her meetings and speeches, at home and around the world, where she talks about the development of democracy, her status as the first woman president and her efforts to uphold Taiwan’s independence and break through it’s lack of international recognition.

She’s joined by a host of Taiwanese officials, members of her DPP party, American China watchers, Taiwan advocates and officials, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as Hope’s film unpacks the issues with news footage of, among others, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese military exercises.

Those exercises, Tsai says, aren’t aimed at starting a war with China. But rather to try to protect Taiwan from invasion by the country that has worked to control, if not occupy it, for 70 years, claiming there is only one China, and refuses to deal with other countries that have official relationships with Taiwan.

A quick look at Taiwan’s history — presented via graphics a couple of times in the film — effectively makes the argument that the island, colonized by European and imperial Chinese in the 17th to 19th centuries and occupied by Japan from 1895 to 1945, was never part of China.

When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), led by Chaing Kai-shek, lost the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong's communist insurgence, it retreated to Taiwan in 1949, where the KMT ruled under authoritarian control.

But those facts have little bearing on international relations, isolating Taiwan, which is even excluded from the World Health Organization — devastatingly illustrated by a Zoom call to a WHO official who hangs up rather than talk about shutting out the country during the SARS crisis.

America’s conflicting interest in the standoff between Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, and the PRC is illustrated via an incident in which then-President Trump spoke with Tsai on the phone, triggering the Chinese and forcing 93-year-old Henry Kissinger to fly to Beijing to mollify Xi.

There are myriad economic implications from the dispute, most notably a Chinese effort to take over Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry.

The final element folded into the jam-packed documentary is Taiwan’s history on human rights, from its abuses — powerfully shown by Chen Chu, the head of the country’s Human Rights Commission, who visits the prison where she was held as a pro-democracy dissident from 1979-86 — to becoming the first Asian nation to approve same-sex marriage.

That’s a lot of material to spin into one film. But Hope does so with such skill and understanding that “Invisible Nation� resonates strongly in its depiction of and argument for Tsai’s efforts to maintain democracy and official recognition for her efforts and has become particularly timely with last week’s election of Trump, a Xi admirer, that could be very negative for Taiwan, which is protected from invasion in some ways by the U.S.