Discover Movies

Taiwan is an island country. Although it is surrounded by the sea, its people fear the sea since the politics, the history and the religious beliefs held on this island make people turn their backs to the sea. Oceanic literature author Liao Hung-chi and underwater photographer Ray Chin lead the audience out to the sea and into the water. They prompt us to understand the sea and to think about the possibility that the ocean might become our lives and the future of our country.

“What were you doing last year, when I took this photo from a train passing by your house?”

An in-depth documentary on the reclusive Taiwanese artist Huang Hua-Cheng and his avant-garde legacy. Commissioned by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum for the retrospective exhibition: “An Open Ending: Huang Hua-Cheng” (2020).

During the soft lockdown, many people once again got back in touch with their lives: a girl shot videos everyday to share with the woman who was to be her mother, a father who finally has time for his cat, a teenager who has to graduate through videoconferencing, an individual quarantining alone at home, and a director whose new film was put on hold. Everyone grows and adapts to the new normal, and subsequently bids farewell to their old life.

For her debut feature Finding Sayun (不一樣的月光), Atayal director Chen Chieh-yao (陳潔瑤) returns to her home village to unearth the legend of Sayun (sometimes spelled Sayion), an Atayal girl who fell to her death in a turbulent stream while carrying a Japanese teacher’s belongings at the end of World War II. The movie begins when the tale of Sayun draws a television crew to the Atayal hamlet of Tyohemg (金岳) in Nanao Township (南澳), Yilan County. Yukan (Tsao Shih-hui, 曹世輝), a high-school boy and a young hunter, does not understand the crew members’ interest in the story. But his grandfather’s (Chang Chin-chen, 張金振) memories of Sayun, whom he went to school with, revives his interest in the old tribal village, which the villagers had been forced to desert 50 years prior.

Daughter of Nectar, a gracefully carved marble nude from 1921 by Huang Tu-shui, Taiwan's inaugural modern sculptor, encapsulates a complex century of Taiwanese history, spanning from Japanese colonisation to Chiang Kai-shek's authoritarian rule and the White Terror era. This sculpture, both delicate and resilient, stands as a silent sentinel, mirroring the enduring struggles, suppressed voices, and profound cultural transformations of its homeland.

In 2018, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited by the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area Administration to make this film, his eighth in the "Walker" series. In the constant passage of time, the Zen-like footsteps of the Walker has finally allowed us to see the Pacific Ocean, the open sky, the seagulls, the black sand, an eel catching settlement that arose in the cold winter rain, the twisting branches of the lintou trees, flotsam piled up like mountains, and a newly constructed cement house, which seems to offer a temporary place of rest for the Walker. "Sand" premiered together with the opening of the Zhuangwei Dune Visitor Center.

A continuation of Tsai Ming-Liang's Walker series, featuring Lee Kang-Sheng as a barefoot monk who walks very slowly.

A TV program "One Million Star" was firstly aired in 2007. It claimed to be the biggest singing contest in Taiwanese TV history and promised the first-place winner a record contract and one million NT dollars (about 30,000 USD). The show caused an unanticipated sensation. Through this film, we will see how Taiwanese young people hang on to their dreams in a seemingly hopeless and desperate society.

The film sketches the lives and tribulations of some of those kids the college girl on summer break, the boys from the neighbouring province who only want to do hip-hop and through them we get a real glimpse of what makes Shanghai today a promising big city.

In 2012, the Hong Kong International Film Festival invited Tsai Ming-Ling to make the opening short film. Having grown up with Hong Kong's popular culture, Tsai Ming-Liang decided to pay homage by making a "Walker" film, contrasting the Walker's slowness with the frenzied pace of Hong Kong's cosmopolitan life. The film ends with a song by Hong Kong actor and singer Samuel Hui, who was Tsai Ming-Liang's idol during his youth. The film was invited to be the closing short film for the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

Brash and opinionated, Christine Choy is a documentarian, cinematographer, professor, and quintessential New Yorker whose films and teaching have influenced a generation of artists. In 1989 she started to film the leaders of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests who escaped to political exile following the June 4 massacre. Though Choy never finished that project, she now travels with the old footage to Taiwan, Maryland, and Paris in order to share it with the dissidents who have never been able to return home.

The Pasta’ay, which means "the festival of the legendary little people," is a significant ritual held every other year in the Saisiat aborigine group in Taiwan. Every ten years, they hold the Great Ritual. This film focuses on the Great Ritual in 1986. It tries to convey the Saisiat people’s affection for and belief in the legendary little people. At the same time, the film brings into light Saisiat people’s ambivalence towards tourist invasion, and their dilemma of being caught between tradition and modernization. Structured by the Pasta’ay songs’ movements, the film breaks down to 15 chapters. It carefully juxtaposes the visual with the aural elements, which are conveyed in the conceptual dichotomy between “the real” and “the artificial.”

An unexpected and joyous exploration of womanhood, autonomy and self-reinvention, told through the video diaries and personal archive of the free-spirited XiXi and the evolution of the friendship between her and the filmmaker.

Focusing on Mark Lee Ping-bin, one of the most talented and prolific cinematographers in Asia, the movie details the itinerant lifestyle of a deeply observant and philosophical artist and the tolls that his profession takes on his family life.

Fewer number of indigenous people in Taiwan still believe in Shamanism. Shamans bore responsibility for communicating with the spirit world, and relied on rituals to help others to avoid misfortune. However, both the suffering patient who wishes to have a ritual performed and the shaman performing the ritual have their own troubles. Can these wounded spirits find healing in beliefs?

In 2019, the night in Hong Kong was still in fascinating beauty and the landscape of everyday life was gradually changing. Travelling the streets, Tsai Ming-liang documented the city's rhythm and ambience, along with an overpass.

Dancer SHEU Fang-yi’s career has been told through her modern dance dramas such as Sparrow, Stranger, Wall, and Martha GRAHAM‘s Heretic. Martha GRAHAM once said: “A dancer dies twice — once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.” At this intersection of her life, SHEU Fang-yi commemorates her glorious past two decades with a funeral, to farewell her past self, and to get ready to move toward her unknown future.

When Birdy was young, he was like a fledgling still learning how to fly. He needed care and nurturing from his family to grow strong, yet he didn’t want to grow into the person his family expected him to be. SECOND ROUND is a coming-of-age documentary that intertwines Birdy’s gender transition with his inner emotional transformation—pulling back, pushing back, confusion, courage, fear, anxiety, and taking one last all-in gamble. We walk alongside Birdy through countless thoughts and struggles, witnessing a life crack open, grow, and ultimately find its way back to itself.

After four decades, a group of veteran singers gather together again. The songs they wrote when they were young had once changed the fate of the island. However, time took away their youth and changed the island's soul. Not only a new national identity has formed but so many new music genres have emerged since then. Can the innocent songs they sang back in the old days still be related to the new era?

This documentary focuses on the love story between Dr. Tian and Mrs. Tian. And how fought for democratization of Taiwan.

'Wansei' refers to those Japanese who were born in Taiwan during the colonial period. After WWII, they were repatriated to Japan. It took the director 12 years to conduct the interviews and five years to shoot. It tells the stories of not only Wansei themselves but their friendships, family ties and bravery when facing the harsh adversity.

One rainy afternoon, the sound of a vendor calling out "Fix your screen windows, screen doors - Install new glass!" summoned this daydream. I traveled with the repairman to Toad Mountain in search of the maiden he so vividly described. But the houses here had long crumbled into ruin.

What do you think of when you think of a grain of rice? Let It Be is a documentary that records the daily labor and lives of three elderly rice farmers in Tainan County’s Houbi Township. In the heart of Taiwan’s rice-producing country, they have passed their days shedding a bead of sweat to match each grain of rice. The film depicts their lifestyles which have changed little over the last half-century. Observing their toil at work and the way they go about their lives allows the viewer to appreciate the wisdom that imbues their lives and the fascinating dynamics of their relationships with each other, their animals, the gods, the weather, and the land. Between the vastness of the heavens and the joys and sorrows of the earth and its inhabitants, each farmer fulfills his unique destiny.

After voyu toskʉ's father was released from prison that year, he took his family away from Alishan and wandered around Taiwan for a lifetime. It wasn't until sixty years later that the youngest son, voyu toskʉ, decided to move back up to the mountains. voyu never understands why he grew up in the plain while his father was always wandering. They moved from one place to another, never truly settling down. And voyu's life trajectory is similar to his father's, never knowing where his home truly belongs. So, does the warm "home" that everyone talks about really exist?

Martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987. Since then, all kinds of reform and democratization were raised. However, in May 1991, four young people were arrested by the Bureau of Investigation (MJIB). This had generated the fear in society and led to the so-called “White Terror.”

If you are a woman who wants to have children, you are not allowed to have any assisted reproductive treatments in Taiwan unless you are married to a man. In 2019, Mota and City “were allowed” to become each other’s wives but they are still “not allowed” to have children. Despite the fact, they refuse to bow down to the law and have found a route not regulated by any laws just to fulfill their longing to become mothers.

After her birth, Nien-hua never met her father and was raised solely by her mother. She lived with her mother and older sister in a community building named “Viva Family.” To outsiders, her mother seemed to excessively pamper her children, but in reality, she used various forms of violence to discipline them. At the age of 23, Nien-hua receives a strange message on Facebook from her father, who had never been present in her life. He talks about their brief marriage in a way Nien-hua has never heard before. This regret of never having met her father leads Nien-hua to decide to meet him. As the director seeks to unravel this repressed event, she discovers that each person remembers it in a vastly different way. In the search for truth, everyone reveals their own secrets and inadvertently confirms a recurring dream.

Poetry, literature, painting and old film clips converge in this lyrical, unusually designed film essay about Le Moulin, the Taiwanese poets’ collective which protested in the 1930s against the cultural superiority of the Japanese occupier and the domination of realism in poetry.

A minibus carrying a theater troupe moves slowly along a winding mountain road. They are heading for the Namasia tribe who live deep in the mountainous region, to perform specially for the children. As evening comes, the children gather after school at the temporary camp in the village square, waiting for the performance to start. However, a boy discreetly shows up at the back of the stage bringing an unexpected twist to the planned event.

An ecological film that took 17 years to film directed by Ma Jue-ming, producer of "MIT Taiwan Chronicle," documents the research and investigation of Taiwan's endemic mountain salamander species.

On the Train captures from the birth to the last moment of the railway, 98.2 kilometers long and opened in 1992, crossing southern Taiwan.

A third-generation heir of a family-run shrimp business returns to his hometown to take over the family business and arrange his marriage as per his father's wishes. His childhood friend, a filmmaker, documents their journey as they explore what he truly wants in life. This is a story about the leisurely daily life of two young men in a fishing village.

From New York City to the farmlands of the Midwest, there are 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., yet one dish in particular has conquered the American culinary landscape with a force befitting its military moniker—“General Tso’s Chicken.” But who was General Tso and how did this dish become so ubiquitous? Ian Cheney’s delightfully insightful documentary charts the history of Chinese Americans through the surprising origins of this sticky, sweet, just-spicy-enough dish that we’ve adopted as our own.

Cheung Chau, once a fishing village in Hong Kong, has transformed into a tourist spot. Ri-Tai, a food stall run by A-Cheung, reflects local life, absurdities, and societal realities. A-Cheung spends his days playing games with customers like Plumpy, forming bonds that transcend generations. However, the onset of COVID-19 disrupts this sense of community, leaving the island deserted and questioning whether Ri-Tai's simple way of life will vanish.

A documentary on the history of film studios in Taiwan.

A dazzling and unconventional documentary where a filmmaker explores their first experience of great loss after her best friends Chun and Yueh go missing. Trapped in a cave in Nepal for 47 days, Yueh survives. Chun does not. Yi-Shan offers an intimate window into the complex relationship of survivors as she traverses the intricate terrain of grief and gender with Yueh. Their conversations are steeped in themes of guilt, perseverance, and identity as they navigate Chun’s legacy with ease, even as elders around them fail to acknowledge their friend’s queerness/transness posthumously.

Mr. Lin is a happily retired man who spends his time keeping company with his toddling grandson, walking his dog, and playing golf with his in-laws. Recently, he has been obsessed with houses with river views. In Lin's city of demolitions and reconstructions, money-making investors buy and sell houses at unaffordable prices. Above the skyline of Taipei, will the boundaries between daydreams and reality ever blur?

In Taiwan, director Lee Hsing's films have become a reflection of society and a collective memory of many. His dedication to film not only launched the careers of many movie stars and crew, but was also the foundation of the prestigious Golden Horse Awards. This documentary offers Lee Hsing's personal perspective on family, films, fate and beliefs, giving us a glimpse of the glory and rebirth of Taiwanese cinema.

“I Remember” tells the story of sister writers Chu Tien-wen and Chu Tien-xin, from co-founding the San-san magazine to their respective creative and political efforts up to the present.

In 2015, the Museum of Anthropology at National Taiwan University (NTU) held a traditional wedding for an ancestral post collected from the Kaviyangan village of Paiwan. This documentary is based on the archive from the wedding ceremony, combine the image we shoot after two years, to compare the situation of village before and after the ceremony.

An intimate two-person portrait of painter Hsieh Hsiao-te (謝孝德) and his illiterate, self-taught sculptor father Hsieh Chin-shou (謝金壽), exploring urban-rural tensions, generational differences, and divergences in their choice of media. A short documentary from Chang Chao-tang’s (張照堂) tenure on the China Television Company’s News Highlights (新聞集錦) program.

An impressive bottle of fine Scotch is in your hand. From barley to barrel, who made it and how did they do it?

For over 70 years, Kai has lived in a military dependents’ house frequented by monkeys. He has spent years maintaining the almost 90-year-old house. In facing monkeys’ intrusions, typhoons and the unpredictable nature of life, can he weather the trials of nature and time?

This film follows the lives of undocumented Vietnamese workers in Taiwan doing odd jobs to survive, after having been forced to flee their employers due to harsh working conditions and lack of medical care. How will living this way for more than a decade shape their lives?

The film centres around three condemned prisoners who committed different crimes, with one still serving his sentence, one who has taken his own life in prison, and one already executed. Consisting of unembellished interviews and news footage, the film shows the director’s concern for the condemned prisoners and their families as human beings; moreover, it examines the contemporary history of capital punishment in Taiwan and questions the current judicial system.

"The very first Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival was held here at Zhongshan Hall. During my university days, I volunteered as a ticket seller in order to watch films for free. Many years later, I received the top award at the Taipei Film Festival in an award ceremony held here as well. I have also run a coffeehouse here and often held small screenings of classic films during that time. Last year, I shot my film, Your Face, inside Guangfu Auditorium. The film was composed of thirteen big close-ups. Each of those thirteen faces was filled with the passage of time. Now, I am given a chance to film Zhongshan Hall again. I switched off all the lights and allowed the warm winter sun to shine on her face."

"What the axe forgets, the trees remember." The Tree Remembers presents the current situation in Malaysia where the racial policy is still practiced and the victims are forced to remain silent. This film re-examines the origin of racism in Malaysia and the taboo of racial riot in 1969.

Nguyen was reported for a car theft and ended up being shot nine times by police officer Chen Chung-wen. Nguyen bled to death on the way to the hospital. The public supported Chen's use of firearms against the runaway migrant who resisted arrest. Were the nine shots the only cause of Nguyen's death? When the perpetrator isn't necessarily the true perpetrator, is the imperfect victim the one to blame?

Viewers are transported back in time to 1974 to see the annual Taoist celebration of the Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage. Thousands of participants accompany a statue of the goddess Mazu, who protects seafarers, on a 9-day, 8-night procession, stopping at several prominent temples along the way. The religious pilgrimage is a round-way journey from the Zhenlan Temple in Dajia, Taichung City to Fengtian Temple in Xingang of Chiayi County on the Western plains of Taiwan. The mesmerising festival takes place every year during the third lunar month and still attracts large masses to this day. The audio track of the film was once banned under the Kuomintang (KMT) due to the film’s inclusion of spoken Hokkien (Taiwanese), giving viewers at the time an altered and suppressed understanding of the event and its cultural significance in Taiwan. Viewers now can revel in the beauty of the Taiwanese language and see the film for the true spirit that it captures.