Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

At nightfall, the sound of a whistle echoes as the young planet awakens. They gallop through the dark night, following pre-programmed instructions, silently carrying out their covert mission, gathering and dispersing. They await the break of dawn, leaving no trace of their presence when the sun rises again.

Bo lin lives in the countryside, while Yu xin lives in the city. They are an eyesore to each other. However, on a stormy night, Bo lin's carelessness resulted in Yu xin getting lost. They went to a lot of trouble to find him! Upon returning home, they shared steaming hot typhoon noodles, a typical nickname for noodles in canned mackerel tomato sauce. This shared history not only brought them closer but also made them begin to accept each other.

In 2016, Taiwan's film and television industry was in a recession. This made life even more difficult for the lowest-level performers, the extras. The story begins with Kehan Zhang, a man who loves acting and works as a full-time extra. He had been working as an extra for three years and paid NTD 500 in cash every time. His daily routine includes searching for various audition opportunities, submitting resumes, and only receiving audition notices every now and then. To fulfill the dream of becoming a leading actor, he decided to venture into the film and television industry in China and started his Don Quixote journey with pals. The documentary also films other actors and actresses - the girl from the south and Brother Long, and how they experienced gender and age limitations in the industry. Besides the stereotypes in the industry, they also faced challenges balancing work and family.

“The passing of time would be meaningful and memorable only when something happens.” Commissioned by Chiayi Art Museum, the crew revisit locations where photographer FANG Ching-mian, known as Uncle Hsin-kao, shot 70 years ago in Yushan (Niitakayama). The story of Uncle Hsin-kao and landscapes is told by interweaving a variety of climbers, scenery and Bunun Narration. The narration implies the presence and absence of certain characters in Taiwan history. Through the off-screen voice, a layer of discourse is created with the narrator's role, Bunun's lines, and the images. The absence of the indigenous people in the history of photography, the presence and revisit of the crew, the reports and postcards created by Uncle Hsin-kao reveal a poetic story between Uncle Hsin-kao and landscapes.

One night, a strange woman (Molly) who posts a rental sign board catches Joanne's attention. After a few days, Joanne makes up her mind to dial the phone number on the rental sign board and decides to meet Molly as a tenant. That night,They meet to view Molly's room. However, Molly can't find her house key.

Jin-sen Ho runs a small factory in the countryside of Tainan. His older parents, who have Alzheimer's disease, always chatter about old memories, like when they took Jin-sen Ho to the mountains and grew pineapples in the fields. As time goes by, some memories are lost while others continue.

On a hot summer day, a car is stuck in a traffic jam. The kids are sleepy in the backseat. They seem to feel something cool when they’re half awake. All of a sudden, they’re riding the waves with their feet on surfing boards, surfing in the gridlock. The streets in a big city are like rivers and their branches, and they’re racing each other. Cars, vans, trucks and buses are surging like sea waves. Suddenly, a super big wave comes and knocks them off their surfing boards! To their surprise, a bucket of water is splashed over the windshield. It turns out that their mom has driven the car into a car wash! It was just their imagination. They exchange a glance and smile.

With the form of remote audio conversation for its main narrative, the essay film consists of four chapters, each of which has its own focus but is also interconnected with each other. Blending voice narratives in four languages, moving images and literary texts, the film is mainly made from home video collections created in the 1990s from both filmmakers’ families, with home videos shot in the 1960s by a Hong Kong family as interludes. The film not only unfolds how East Asian families created their own image with amateur filming devices but also tells stories of migration, travelling, growing and familial relationships.​

When a luxurious family touring train halts in a pitch black tunnel, an uninvited creature sneaks on board.

This is a story on human desire and acrid smoke. When Myanmar opened its borders in 2010, there was an incursion of foreign capital into these unclaimed lands, with China the most aggressive of them all. Determined to also stake their claim within this fever rush of Chinese cash, Yung-heung and his comrades have set ablaze large swathes of forest alongside northern Myanmar to be turned into farmland.

A car crash test dummy makes a flipbook to express the existence of itself.

It's been several years since the incident happened. Xianyun tries hard to return to normal life. As a counselor, she hopes to ease her pain of losing her daughter through helping others with their pain. The mother of the killer, Chen, is a neighbor of Xianyun. They see each other occasionally but never spoke. Xianyun could not bring herself to forgive Chen. As the execution day of Chen’s son getting closer, all the pains and memories are once again stirred.

A young couple kills time in the nights of Taipei. She's a psychic who fixes toys; he wants to enter a gang. Slowly, they walk away from each other.

Fighting Life is a remarkable film rejoicing the spirit of life. It is the dynamic tale of two brothers who overcome immense physical and emotional handicaps, and become vital members of society

Lost Taiwanese Watari film, The Magic World of Watari and Watari and the 7 Monsters preceded it.

Chu Liuxiang robs from the rich to help the poor and upholds justice in the jianghu.

Two women make a conversation in a café. One just lost her husband, and the other is the "third person." Their dialogue is about resentment, guilt, confession, and self-forgiveness.

Five "Disciples" with their own addictions gather in a spiritual growth group with religious undertones. They expose their wounds, solicit approval, and try to fill the void within them through the teachings of the leader, “The Master." However, one of the addicts seems to be seeking treatment, but in fact hiding ulterior motives.

In a world where the "Rememory" device allows people to relive fragments of their past memories, many choose to escape reality and immerse themselves in nostalgic reverie. This widespread addiction prompts the government to ban the device. Unable to let go of her past, Alexia decides to relive her cherished memories one last time before the system is shut down. But as she embarks on her nostalgic journey, she encounters an unexpected guest in her memories, leading to unforeseen revelations and a confrontation with reality.

On the journey to depict "borders," Because Watching Pacifies captures two KMT military dependents' villages established for surveillance purposes following the Chinese Civil War. In the mountainous region traversed by Taiwan's Central Cross-Island Highway and the highlands that border Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos, the villages were established in conflict zones along ethnic frontiers.

Li Yi-Fan’s What Is Your Favorite Primitive (2023) narrates “a death match” between the artist and their software while grappling with the production process. In a fight between social and ethical concerns, it also raises questions of image production and communication.

Mr. Cat has aquaphobia, and he was too terrified to swim in the zodiac race to fulfill his dream of becoming the Guardian God of the Year. He has since lived regretfully by the sea, overlooking the race’s destination every day for countless years, until an accident brings him closer and closer to the water.…

Mr.Huang, a truck driver who is legally the guardian, travels north to accompany his daughter, whom he hasn't seen for many years, to apply for a student loan for her university education. He pretends to have forgotten to bring his identification card, hoping to use this as an opportunity to spend more time with his daughter.

It had been a week since mother left. The ten-year-old girl Jiajia desperately kept this fact secret while trying to maintain the usual daily routine with her little brother.

This is a story of two girls whose lives for 16 to 30 intertwined. With flashbacks, they went through the maze of memories and the fog of emotions and realized the moving power of sincerity in depressions and sufferings. Father and daughter, female bonds, straight and homosexual romances are all in this profound story of life.

XIONG,Jie-feng is naive but not easily-influenced. Different from other Chinese young people who prefer working in the cities, XIONG decided to go back to his hometown, Pingzhai Village in Yunnan Province, and started to plant the "Red Rice Seed," a kind of ancient species. The so-called organic agriculture has had an age-old tradition in China. The skills have been passed from generation to generation. This is the major reason why farmers connect to the land both historically and emotionally. The "Red Rice Seed" can only be planted in a traditional and organic way. If the plantation was to succeed, the problems resulted from scientific fertilizers and the overuse of chemicals since the 20th century can all be resolved.

A Taiwanese language comedy by Liang Zhefu. On the Barbers' Guild Recreational meeting there were wonderful performances. Xiao Wang and Feng You are enemies off stage, but now they have to perform a magic show together.

"Vestige" is a 5-minute 2D animated short film in the form of a graphic novel combined with limited animation. Through intricate and atmospheric illustrations, the story portrays the journey of an artist in search of her long-lost childhood friend. As she walks through the war-torn and forgotten hometown of her past, the contrasting lives of these two women unfold, revealing their sorrows and loss in a bittersweet light.

Chen Da, born in 1905, learned traditional Taitung-style songs as a boy. Working as a cowherd and fisherman, he travelled from Hengchun to Taitung. He began his career as a wandering minstrel at 20. Homage to Chen Da portrays his life and singing in various settings, including his hometown and the well-known musical venue in Taipei, Scarecrow Restaurant.

A man who has died from burning himself comes to a paper house, where Golden Boy and Jade Lady await to take him to the Western Paradise. He climbs up to the Hua-Shan-Qiang, and his soul goes through a fable of national identity.

Director Tso-chi Chang made this film with his fellow inmates in prison. It tells the stories of eight prisoners, whose sentences together add up to more than a hundred years. What kind of incidents will touch their hearts and help them find direction in life?

A Liang a timid rookie hearse driver accidentally kisses a corpse on his first job awakening the amnesiac ghost Zhang Wenshan who begins to haunt him Seeking help he receives a bizarre time limited mission from an eccentric priestess As troubles and police pressure grow an unexpected bond forms When the mission fails he escorts the ghost home only to discover it is his long lost father. The spirit fades leaving him to face a long overdue goodbye.

“If I could live my whole life on my own will, what would it be like?” Anja, a 22-year-old biracial film school undergraduate, imagines her ideal life from birth to death. The perfection of Anja’s fantasy starkly contrasts with the incompleteness of her reality, highlighting her deep longing and life story.

Taiwanese documentary about the life of Tao, a Lanyu tribesman and how the director's life and relationship has grown and changed.

For 45 years, Jen-Shiu Hsu has used photography and writing to explore the intricate universe of nature. He has tirelessly shared his discoveries with the world, exposing both its beauty and the destruction caused by human civilization. But in 2019, after undergoing surgery for the first time in his life, he became acutely aware of time. Suddenly, his lifelong rhythm of exploration faced an unavoidable limit. His final, unfinished expedition—will it be the closing chapter of his journey, or the start of something new? This documentary observes a man who has always sought the core of nature, now faced with the reality of his own mortality. As he embarks on one last great adventure, the film also captures how the filmmaking team, through their own journeys, begins to question their relationship with nature and their understanding of life itself.

After being brutally raped by a drunken cabbie Rose becomes a recluse and plans her revenge. She takes on a new identity as the Mad Rose the vigilante. Tracking down rapists and criminals is her new occupation and she seems to relish the work. The Taipei cops soon get wind of her violent antics and set about trapping her. (IFD films website)

A documentary short about a founder of a sanctuary for southeast Asian immagrant workers' babies.

The Tiger God project originated during the artist’s residency at Cien Art Village in Hualien in 2021, inspired by a Sikawasay (Amis priest) who said a concrete tiger carried a soul. The work explores encounters between Han folk beliefs and Amis spiritual traditions, reflecting on suppressed indigenous histories in eastern Taiwan under colonial and religious forces. Nighttime fireworks symbolize external impacts on the land, linking concrete animals, mining, and colonial imagination. The ritual opera returns the footage to the land and gods, weaving ritual, research, and reflection into a narrative about silent objects and memory.