Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

The maritime life and the complexity of matters, which include conflicts of interest, in one of the busiest waters in Asia, the Strait of Malacca, are accumulated through bodies. The other side of stories from archipelago was assembled and retold by Irwan and Tita after they conducted visits to several islands in Riau Archipelago, especially to Batam Island, a region that was once planned to be converted into an industrial area in 70s but now is facing the most serious challenges created by social problems.The region is tangling with interests and power centralized in Java Island which has created uncontrolled distortion.

An office worker’s encounters with a caterpillar unlock childhood memories, looping through time, blending the mundane and the magical.

Marriage, in addition to the physical and emotional connection between two people, also implies the inheritance of history and nation, the suppression of political consciousness, folk culture and the symbolism of life and death, like a bizarre drama played out in the ruins of a military camp.

Man Mei, a Hakka woman born in a Miaoli farming village during the Japanese colonial era, carries a life that spans a century and traces the shifting currents of Taiwan's transformation.

"We won the game we imagined, or we imagined the game we won? " CHENG, the ace pitcher from high school team, was talking about the joy of his MLB's contract. But when asked about his arm, he started stammering. Despite the attempts to argue that he wasn't hurt, CHENG, Facing the psychiatrist, he eventually told a "fact" he hasn't accepted - a lifelong fear.

After his wife passed away, he started to dream… In his dream, he rowed a boat under endless tress on a dark, secret little river… Yu Dong wanted to keep his wife’s phone with her in the coffin. However, it was stolen by his nephew sold in the second-h market. The sadness seemed endless that made him start to send messages to his wife’s phone. Xiao Jun, an independent, young girl lived with her grpa, bought the phone in the market. She started to receive those messages from Yu Dong…

When a filmmaker learns that his family’s traditional Chinese courtyard house in Taiwan will be partially demolished to pay off debts, he begins documenting the loss, only to be drawn into filming a politician’s campaign. The project evolves into a deeply personal exploration of exile, non-belonging, and the identity of the Taiwanese diaspora returning home. Weaving childhood nostalgia, political propaganda, and the brutal destruction of his family home through Lacan’s registers of the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary, the film reflects on memory, loss, and the longing for a voice. Anchored by demolition footage and the nostalgic pop song "Red Dragonfly," The Politician, the Demolition & the Dump Truck asks: Can the Taiwanese diaspora truly belong, and can their voices ever be heard?

Directed by Lih-Kuei Chen, this film honours Professor Chiou’s legacy and traces his journey from early disillusionment under martial law in Taiwan, to formative years in the United States, and decades of community-based activism in Australia. Through interviews, archival footage, and his own writings, the film explores Cold War exile, the making of diasporic identity, and the small but powerful role of critical thought in shaping transnational Taiwanese democracy. More than a portrait of a single intellectual, the documentary reflects on broader dynamics of cultural resistance, diaspora diplomacy, and the political life of ideas beyond the Taiwan/China binary.

As a child, Yu Xin loved riding in her father Zheming's taxi—the Apollo 11—feeling like she was on a space voyage through the city. After her father's death, Yu Xin discovers that he adopted a boy named Lin Si Liang. Driven by curiosity, Yu Xin decides to drive the Apollo 11 on one last space mission. When she reaches a desolate wasteland resembling the lunar surface, a strange boy's voice suddenly comes through her father's old radio. Just as the moon always shows the same face to the Earth, Yu Xin sees a different side of home.

This film uses a humorous way to present the spirit of Taiwanese. A little green bean named as Kao Hsiung NO.9, a doctor of bean a young farmer, they are going to find a new path for Taiwan’s Agriculture. Those people are keeping learning adapting the world trends.

In the hotel room, a girl is lying next to another girl. She walks to the bathroom and seems to be talking to someone else. Is she mentally disturbed, or is there another conspiracy?

"Blended Vision" is a duo-screen video. The screen on the left shows a video about Lau's experience of accompanying his father during eye surgery. As the father's vision gradually becomes disabled, he begins to rely on his daughter's eyes to see the world, and the roles of caregiver and caretaker are reversed. In the series of events from the discovery of the disease to examination, surgery, and recovery, the emotional changes between father and daughter constantly overlap and stagger, and are connected by an invisible line. The video on the right, Lau uses a camera lens to imitate the blurred vision from the eyes of her father, and returns to the places he passes by every day, the park near their home, the same teahouse, the same bus route, the same way home... to reproduce those things that are seen repeatedly in the scenery.

A soon-to-be college freshman moves to the city where she will spend the next few years of her life, searching for a place to call her own. Through a senior’s recommendation, she finds a vacant room once occupied by a former tenant and decides to rent it. While settling in, she discovers an old cassette player left behind—

Cheng, Pei, Wei and Ah Doa went to Hualien for a 2-day trip. To 3 of the friends, this trip was meant to keep Cheng’s company due to a recent break-up. To Cheng, it has different meaning: to return something to the sea.

Maciated and exhausted girls are trapped in a dark dungeon, where they are repeatedly subjected to the violence of a terrifying creature. Through mutual support, they search for a way to escape, only to realize that the companions who helped them along the way were, in fact, reflections of themselves.

Recording the way things are.

Me and my sister. I don't think an answer is needed but the endless feeling spreading.

When Taiwanese citizens vanish in China, a journalist returns home in search of answers. What begins as reporting becomes a personal reckoning—revealing the high cost of speaking out and the quiet erosion of freedom in Taiwan.

A woman from Chiang Mai speaks in Thai, Mandarin, and Yunnanese. That is the voice I am the most familiar with, the one I first sensed and heard from within her womb. It is also my mother tongue. I chat with my mother about her family of origin and childhood memories. When we are not talking, I wander around the house, touching light and air. Those scents and traces of where my mother resides, along with the fleeting images of her presence, are my intimate gaze of her.

An Ultraman compilation film from Taiwan.

A team of workers is sent to planet Gliese 12b to build a gravitational portal. To conserve energy for survival on the frozen planet, each worker is allowed to speak only 113 words per day.

Vivian and Joshua, who haven’t seen each other for a long time, separately seek out Tien in private to ask for advice about whether they should break up with the other. As Tien listens to them talk on and on, she also begins to have some thoughts of her own.

People live. Fractions of life continue to happen every single second. Kinds of relationship embody the individuals' hearts.

Shower and name. Destruction and reconstruction. Over and over. Again and again. This is my body and within my self. Long lays the nature. Nature.

During the busy banana harvest, Phik-tsu’s collision with the newcomer Bing-to damages a harvest and forges a fateful connection. This catches the eye of Taipei businessman Liau Tsui-tsuann, who not only plots a smuggling operation but also covets Phik-tsu's beauty. On a company outing, Liau tries to get close to Phik-tsu, but a series of funny mishaps brings Bing-to and Phik-tsu closer instead. As a typhoon approaches, the plantation faces a new crisis. Will they find a way to be together?

While conducting research in the deep sea, a scientist makes a terrifying and unforeseen discovery.

The story of an unlikely friendship between Chief Aliman of the Bunun clan (Taiwan's Aborigines) and Japanese anthropologist MORI Ushinosuke during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. The immersive experience leads viewers along the path of these two extraordinary characters, revealing the deep mutual respect they shared for Jade Mountain – and how it forged their lasting bond.

It was not just a blazing forest fire, but embers clinging together only for survival... The short film is about the intimate relationship between two young girls. Yet the bond they treasured was veiled under an indescribable shadow…

My Imported Bride

Orphan Ling Po is a Taiwanese-language (taiyu) biopic about the eponymous legendary Hong Kong movie star.

Plot kept under wraps.

There’s a sense of being hollowed out slowly and deeply, as if everything is happening all over again, yet it exists only within the images. The life within the images keeps rolling and reminding me that I no longer possess that time — that good time has already slipped away.

In southern China, in a newly built neighborhood, a security guard is taking a nap. He helps pick up a package and takes the chance to sneak into his friend’s place. He wanders around inside until he got caught. He learned about the news of the relocation and recalld his memories of the treasure he had buried in the ground in his childhood. The sound of building construction is going on and on till the buildings eventually built up. Digging up memories seems pointless.

In those boring little games, from guessing names to this-or-that, from competing to see who laughs first to the things we say to each other, many moments reveal our familiarity and deep bond. But what he didn't expect was that, at the end of the games, there would be no next time.

In a city of silent hearts, Ah-Hua meets Xiao-Ya online. He then feels a fleeting warmth in his still life. When she vanishes, his world dims. Their sudden reunion feels like fate... but is it a second chance, or just another beautiful illusion?

A taiyupian co-starred Chang Di, Yang Li-hua and Kang Ding.

Sun Chung's directorial debut.

This footage is a record of Katsumi Komatsu’s visit to urban and rural areas in Taiwan, specifically Taipei and Tainan, in April 1936 (Showa 11), conducted as a preliminary survey for the comprehensive research project by the Attic Museum. The footage is silent.

Rye Green Berry is a code for RGB. This film summons our memories of light and color through film screens. It then intentionally rewrites the slowly disappearing color worlds - historical paintings, vintage movies, videotapes - in digital space, transforming them into a new color palette. Taking its cue from Roland BARTHES' S/Z, the film overcodes found materials, liberates characters from their original stories and builds an operatic fable from their signifiers.

Formosa depicts the landscapes, architecture, customs, culture, agriculture, natural scenery, Indigenous peoples, and colonial traces of Taiwan during the period of Japanese rule. It also reflects how the world at that time perceived and imagined Taiwan. This film is the earliest known surviving motion picture shot in and about Taiwan. This introductory documentary was donated as a duplicate print by the Netherlands Filmmuseum (now Eye Filmmuseum) in 1991. According to the museum’s records, the nitrate print dates to approximately 1922. However, based on the research of scholar Lee Daw-ming, the film may have been shot as early as 1917 by Herford T. Cowling. The exact date when the original positive film was produced and its subsequent whereabouts remain unknown. Formosa is preserved and presented by the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute in 2025.

After meticulous planning, the Ergou Squad decided to carry out the robbery of a convenience store.

Two friends go on an adventure, gathering all kinds of ingredients to cook up an epic meal!