Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

Divine Intervention explores the journey of a woman tormented by the entanglement of her hair, seeking solace through a spiritual guide. Together, they employ a unique technique to enter her consciousness, aiming to uncover the root of her distress. The Yuan Shen Palace, also known as the House of the Mind, is depicted as a virtual world constructed by the brain. If it truly exists, it might function like a vast organic hard drive, recording the intricate details of one’s life. The film strives to rationalize magic and symbolize the process of spiritual healing.

On the eve of graduation, Xi accidentally overhears her crush, Yu, talking about his ideal type after a football match. In an instant, her natural curls become her biggest worry. She starts a secret plan to straighten her hair. But things didn’t go as planned and beneath their friendship, something began to quietly shift. Just before everything falls apart, Xi slowly realises that maybe being imperfect isn’t so bad.

“Lio-ma-gou” is the only fresh water in Green Island, In the 1950s, in a political prison concentration camp, held nearly 100 female political prisoners. With the film, let us follow the pursuit and inquiries of the young generation, and approach the two “former female political prisoner.”

Taiwanese writer and social critic Long Yingtai spent the last decade undertaking an ambitious project to record the untold stories of the Chinese Civil War that culminated in the Kuomintang's 1949 retreat to Taiwan. Based on her research as well as first-hand experiences collected through interviews, Long wrote the book "Big River Big Sea 1949," and, with the help of producer Wang Shau-di and director Huang Li-ming, also created this companion documentary. The film chronicles her yearlong journey visiting war survivors scattered throughout Taiwan, Hong Kong, and various places in mainland China, preserving a generation's precious memories in the form of a vivid oral history.

Yunlin, literally "the cloud forest", is named for its dense forest and cloudy landscape in past time. This wonderland relies mainly on agriculture and fishery. As the time passes, the forest gradually disappears but the beautiful cloud remains. The cloud forest looks the same in a different way.

Ashin meets Elise at a night market. She looks like an innocent girl until she involves him in a mysterious game that consists in catching her. They run through the streets until she leads him to this apartment. Not knowing whose house he is stepping in, Ashin then realizes that the game has gone too far... Elise is not there, and he gets caught by the police.

This animated film presents the journey of a queer person, exploring sexuality and the queer community. It illustrates an observation of the modern queer society and fantasies toward the freedom of gender fluidity, reflecting the real situation of the community where discriminations, freedom, and love coexist.​

Tsunma, an honorific term connoting “noble, delicate, and pure”, refers to the Tibetan Buddhist Nuns of the Himalayan Region who have been largely dismissed or forgotten by the traditions they follow and the societies they’ve served. Taiwanese photographer Lin Li-Fang undertook a solo journey up 4,270 meters into the Himalayan Plateau and lived for an entire summer with some of these nuns and recorded life in the unforgiving environment dubbed “The Roof of the World”. There, Li-fang captured a life devoted to hope and faith and a people possessing a unique kind of tolerance, humility, and perseverance. This is a story of the Nuns of the Himalayas, of seeing one’s life through theirs, that is, a life lived in faith and with the spark of a summer eternal.

For hundreds of years, Taiwan has been under different colonial rules. From the Dutch, the Spanish, the Japanese, and nowadays Republic of China, each regime left their footprints on this island. Only the indigenous people of this island experienced of the process. They were given different names during different periods of colonisation and their cultures have been changed. Through the life of a Truku elder, we see the history of aboriginal recertification movement.

This film records my father’s daily life after my grandmother’s passing, exploring memory as a form of the soul’s continuation.

Three space engineers operating a surface printer travel into outer space to build colony. Suddenly they encountered a meteorite shower and have been trapped. Young crews decided to go into hibernation and then, the captain thought of a special rescue plan.

For 23 years, Hu has served as an interpreter in Taiwan, assisting over a thousand migrant workers and new residents. This film highlights how interpreters support law enforcement, ensuring justice and protecting linguistic minorities in a system once lacking proper translation for foreign-related cases.

Though Taiwan's rainfall is three times the global average, its uneven distribution creates striking scarcity. Water gives and takes; it sustains life yet brings destruction. Following the sound of currents, the film reflects on water's shifting states, capturing the emotional and spiritual ties woven between people, memory and the surrounding tides.

It’s time to leave the fort belongs to us.

Wai has been living with her father David ever since her mother abandoned them. Wai always compromises with David in order to deal with the fact that he overly controls her. They rely on each other, but they have a love-hate relationship. David broke his leg from an accident at a construction site. He intentionally concealed his recover details to the social worker, in order to get compensation payments. One day, the social worker paid them a visit. A stormy conflict between the father and the daughter had just begun.

Yuexin is trapped in an endless time loop—each time he wakes, he's confronted by his wife, Shuchun, holding a photo of his affair and asking the same question: “Why?” He’s tried apologizing, explaining, yelling, even staying silent, but no matter how he responds, the outcome never changes.

In Taipei New Park, a woman uses a device meant to find hidden cameras but accidentally brings the park’s statues to life. These statues, linked to Taiwan’s colonial past, seem to rise to avenge a tragic plane crash during a 1964 national day’s military parade under Chiang Kai-shek’s military law.

Blending stop-motion animation and silent film, a new narrative unfolds. The story follows a stubborn "tooth mouse" who clings to the past, and a restless "shark girl" who only chase the future. Their paths collide in a fierce, ritualistic battle on an altar. Can the mouse accept change while protecting what's dear? Can the shark acknowledge the weight of memory while relentlessly pursuing the future? This confrontation will ultimately lead them toward a "fatal growth", where both must destroy their old selves to be reborn.

Bean's delusion makes her think she’s a surveillance camera. Every day, she stays in the parking lot with Fox, the manager, watching everything intently without moving. Life is dull until one day, a vending machine appears across the lot, and a boy named Daikon comes daily to buy a can of Coke.

A short film by Wang Chu-Chin. The first winner of Golden Harvest Award in Taiwan.

Following Karen, a Malaysian teenage boy of Indian origin, this film documents his youth in a period of six years. Through Karen, we explore the hardship his people have endured and the eventual breakdown of his family both caused by the racial discrimination and education inequality in Malaysia.

To explore sources of energy in space, the Stryker team is sent on a pioneering mission to an unknown alien planet where an unstoppable battle-ax mech awaits them.

The film is inspired by the costumes of folk art performers at Taiwan's ceremonial festivals. Adapted from the Southeast Asian folktale The Mousedeer Crosses River, it integrates similar folktale narratives from different countries to create animated puppet dancers.

On the eve of World Human Rights Day, the Taiwan Society and Friends of Taiwan released the documentary "Red Martial Law" yesterday, which aims to restore the historical truth through images of the various brutal human rights violations committed by the military and police in the Chen Yunlin incident.

A Taiwanese opera (koa-á-hì) tiayupian by Lee Hsing

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature once considered the expansive tidal flats connecting the Dadu and Zhuoshui River estuaries in southeastern Taiwan as one of Asia’s most significant wetland areas. This area was once one of Taiwan’s most important bird habitats as well. But the passage of time has increasingly distanced local fishing villages from the sea and its sustenance.

From the world to Taiwan, 2020 has been filled with turbulent crises. This documentary records how anti-epidemic hotels play a vital role in the severe test of the COVID-19 epidemic, how they stand up, and what tests they encounter during the process. Director Chen Yujie spent 10 months recording the worries of Chinese people and students who returned from abroad when faced with an unfamiliar epidemic situation; the staff of the epidemic prevention hotel went from fear and fear to enthusiastic reception when they were entrusted with important tasks. From a perspective you have never seen before, every decision made in the battle against COVID-19 will be a piece of history deeply imprinted in your heart.

Several migrant workers carry stolen wood through a small winding trail. An accident happens when the police try to arrest them. The night coming, the injured worker, Đoàn, has a strange interaction with the man who wants to find him.

Short animation by Po Chou Chi

While suspended from a crane eight storeys up in the air, a man performs a guitar solo. The act staged in homage to a failed art project from 20 years ago is one of several moments in Taiwanese history that artist Hsu Che-yu unearths and reanimates.

A man is numbed by being preached by his supervisor and his priest. He doesn't know if God exists in him. One day, a black-clothed man appears and starts to linger around him. The black-clothed man throws eggs at him as a ritual and makes him reborn in front of God. This film is both a fantasy and a mystery and presents the confusion of faith and sexuality.

Coming to Taiwan in the last century following Kuo-Min-Tang, it turns out that there is no home for the veterans to return to. They eventually settle down in Kang-Le Li, with all the others who are the builders of fancy metropolitan Taipei but find city housing unaffordable.

In 2004, when an outbreak of H5N2 bird flu was first reported in Taiwan, Taiwan bureaucratic system insisted that this case was caused by chickens infected by migratory birds, but after investigation, the truth is unscrupulous businesspeople smuggling bird flu virus strains, invent and sell the illegal manufacture of vaccines. After the failure of the production, this vaccines resulting in a pandemic spread over whole henhouse. To unveil the truth, director began collecting samples from henhouse in 2006 and this six-year long investigation, never find the way out until the March 2010.

Late at night, there are animals minding their own business beside a lake. Some of them meet at the end, and then they drink tea and making sticky rice happily together ever since. This is a film about metaphors, view with a caution.

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

Maquette 1:1000 investigates a Taiwanese young architect’s self-awareness through the observation of two difference cities. Impacted by the cultural shock in the foreign environment of the West, Lan Lin makes her decision as she is again facing the same experience, unexpected pregnancy. Having the space-sensitive mind of an architect, she also reconstructs her artistic faith in her career within this extraordinary journey.

A ninth grader gets trapped in a time loop before her senior-high entrance exam. Only by cracking the secret of the loop can she end this nightmare. But will she?

Away for years, what is the unit for alienation? The saxophone at the intersection eleven years ago, the Korean music on the street four years ago, the flight broadcasts after the epidemic, the voices of family members, the days and nights when Taipei and Hong Kong were at a standstill, some moments linger.

Taiwanese movie

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?

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.

A Taiwanese Odyssey resulting from the assassination attempt by three expatriates in April 1970 on Chiang Ching-kuo, heir apparent to dictator Chiang Kai-shek. The story is told through the life of Cecilia Huang, a gentle and quiet participant previously unknown. With memories shared by people across three continents, the film explores complexity of the human condition, love, betrayal, defiance, regrets, trauma and the possibilities of poetic closure from pain and loss.

Two mixed-race children of the US military in Taiwan, one speaking Hakka, the other Taiwanese. In the ruins of a former military dormitory, they speak slowly, uncovering a history their faces and languages could never fully inhabit, their memories moving like ghosts along the edges of history.

A seventeen-year-old girl's family, drowning in debt, agrees to a marriage proposal out of desperation. But the wedding hides a dark secret, a terrifying ritual demanding the sacrifice of five brides. Caught between survival and horror, she is about to face a nightmare far worse than she imagined.

Taiwanese horror movie from 1980.

The devil, longing for the angel's love, put him in a cage to make the angel accept him, and even did things that hurt the angel's siblings. However, these actions caused irreversible and serious consequences.

With each others' promises to go to the same college, Zi Wen and Zhang Xuan had a close but subtle relationship. Zhang Xuan's talent and Ziwen's unspoken secrets disclose the story of its own. A story unveils the conflicts between friendship and the dark side of the protagonist.

ZHENG Dao-nan and Xiao Bei, a pair of well-renowned high school table tennis players nicknamed “Nan-yang and Bei-feng,” lost connections with each other after encountering a gang-brawling incident. Many years later, Xiao Bei led several young ex-gangster to run an industrial-style barber shop. At the same time, ZHENG was released from prison with the mystery of the death of his stepfather, the Mafia Don. The two reunite and work to stop a burring storm in the mafia. After investigating, deducting, and piecing the puzzles together, they finally get hold of the secret ledger that can reshape the landscape of the criminal underworld. In the end, they each have to make their own choices of either getting revenge, reviving their father’s business, returning to the mafia, or living a simple life as ordinary citizens.

At the funeral of her husband, grandma Xiu-ying looks not sad and even hangs out with her childhood sweetheart Chi happily like a girl. Astonished by her behavior, her grandson Yu-chen and his pregnant wife Jie-ru worry about her and brings her back to Taipei. After living together, they find Xiu-ying’s memory and behavior even more strange and diagnosed with Dementia. The doctor explains Xiu-ying may fall into memory at any time, so if they want to understand how to comfort Xiu-ying’s fear and aggression, they need to know more about her relationship with her husband or other close males. However, just when Yu-chen and Jie-ru are still busy building their new life and trying to understand more about grandma, Xiu-ying not only attacks her caretaker and insists accompany Chi only.