Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

A child runs into a forest in a hide-and-seek game and searches for somewhere to hide. As the sun gradually goes down, he encounters an unexpected danger....

Xijiyu, a village on Taiwan’s offshore island of Penghu, became uninhabited following a government-mandated relocation in 1978. Through image, sound, and 3D animation, this film recreates the village and its famed “King’s Boat” ceremony.

A mother and daughter are haunted by sinister 'Elder-Graphics'.

In 1871, the photographer John Thomson came to Formosa to take photos which became the first images of the island seen in the West. Things have changed after more than a century. I chose one of his photos showing an indigenous mother and her child shot in Mucha, Kaohsiung as the starting point of an exploration of the island’s past and the mysterious origin of its ancestors.

In the year of 1996, a national weightlifter coach called A-Fu, founded a female teenager weightlifting team with three Bunun girls from the "Taoyuan Tribe". They're either orphaned or raised by a single parent or grandparents. Despite their success in weightlifting, they are confronted with the harsh reality of their family situations, career development and love lives.

Can a living person dream of a ghost's dreams and assume ghosts can dream? This VR project reveals a forgotten Indochinese refugee camp in Asia and tells a story about a dream within another. The narrative is based on an unknown Vietnamese refugee camp in Penghu, Taiwan, and includes a dream about an unidentified female victim from the Khmer Rouge period. Phuong, the protagonist, was a 13-year-old Vietnamese refugee born in Cambodia. In those dreams, an unidentified Cambodian girl reveals the story of Phuong's family by asking, "HAVE YOU EVER BEEN THERE"? But what does she mean by "THERE"?

Hura is ready to leave her boyfriend for good. On her way out the door, she discovers a 30 foot penis chaining her to her soon-to-be ex.

Tzung-Yu works for a private establishment providing some special services. An illegal job as it is, it becomes his daily life. Being stuck in the repetitive routine, Tzung-Yu is longing for change.

Blues Biyori has multi-meanings literally. Blues can be explained as “blues music” or “melancholy”; Biyori is a Japanese word, which means” a good day for⋯”

The special bond between filmmaker Mei-ling Hsiao and her daughter, who has Asperger syndrome, is meticulously recorded over a period of 12 years. As a result, we see Xiang Yun/Elodie grow from a creative girl into a young adult preparing for a career as a pâtissier. This means leaving her mother in Taiwan and moving to France, where her father lives, and where there is better training. But the distance between mother and daughter puts a strain on their relationship.

One woman and one black cat share a city life together. This life is pleasant and relaxed sometimes, while sad and lonely at other times. The protagonist feels every minute detail in life, and senses the warmth and glitter of life in the briefest of moments. This film takes inspiration from classic French cinema. The director captures the lights and shades of a city and the feeling of solitude with black and white sketches and colorful pastels. The film aspires to be a poem, a brisk song, and a gift to every “one” living alone in cities.

Xiao Liou has gone missing in a summer adventure in the woods with friends. Everyone wants to know what has happen to him, but the truth is buried deeply in the chirping of cicadas, in the babbling brooks, and in the children’s guilty minds.

A man was caught cheating when his girlfriend just walked in. She died in an accident immediately after the witness. The man then fell in love with another woman after a short period of mourning. The ghost of his girlfriend got furious, and revenge was about to begin….

The townspeople of Meinung inherited their Hakka ancestors' stamina, diligence and optimism. They continue treasured traditional practices, notably the production of oiled-paper umbrellas.

Director TSENG occasionally began to record the daily life of her mother, out of the need of completing her documentary assignment at school. The films presents a mother's persistence when facing difficulties and her love for her children. In the meantime, interactions and conversations between mother and daughter are revealed spontaneously.

A film producer, an assassin, and a patriot. These aren’t three characters in this film but three ways of describing Wu Dun, a member of the United Bamboo Gang who murdered the Taiwanese-American writer Henry Liu and became a producer of wuxia films. Hsu Che-yu, who previously brought Single Copy (IFFR 2020) and Re-rupture (IFFR 2018) to Rotterdam, visits Wu’s abandoned studio to restage the events with forensic scanning techniques.

According to the Tao people’s traditional beliefs, illness was a sign of supernatural possession by evil spirits. Many patients thus became isolated, unable to receive any medical care. A native of the Orchid Island (Lanyu) where she worked as a nurse, the filmmaker initiated a program in 1997, recruiting some 40 volunteers to visit and care for homebound elderly patients against considerable social pressure. This documentary captures the powerful dilemma when traditional values clash with compassion.

In 1968, Taitung Hongye Little League defeated Japan's Wakayama Little League 7-0, which was a legendary story of that era. The barefooted children of the Bunun tribe used stones as balls and sticks as sticks to win Taiwan the glory of defeating Japan. But what's the truth behind the legend? Where is the legendary young player now? This film goes into the fog of the premature death of more than half of the players, not only the stigma of impostor, but also the lament of underappreciated talent, and the baseball dream of the next generation of children.

This documentary is about a group of people led by the anti-high artistic attitude of the underground culture of the end century during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 1995 for three consecutive days and two nights, supported by the unprecedented courage of the Taipei County Cultural Center; the planning is broken.

A collection of animated visual poems that illustrate a girl's surreal journey towards facing her fear of intimate relationships and of being touched. She is seen running across the snow, hiding in an apartment and going to the sea, until her pain turns to relief.

It is a visual record of long-lasting open wounds, Chinese medical progress, and the disappearance of memory. This documentary examines the current plight of a small group of elderly Chinese peasants who have been suffering from open wounds for over 70 years. The director visits some elderly surviving soldiers of Unit 731 – a WWII Japanese secret unit devoted to biological warfare.

An explosion of grace and aerial symmetry at 70 beats a second.

Everyday there are many people traveling long distances from Burma to China. They buy motorcycles and resell them in Burma to earn money. Lashio is the traffic center of middle Burma. Jay, who graduated from high school, having no jobs and staying at home, plans to earn money from motorcycle selling after his mum suggested him to do so. Jay then borrows money from his elder brother and sets off his journey to China. Successfully buying motorcycles, will Jay be lucky enough to stay away from robbery while he is driving back home with hopes? Midi left his hometown for a decade and this time he came back and spent two days in underground risky shooting.

Once upon a time in a world full of pirate products, we watched monster movies and grew up. But those monsters disappeared when we finally became adults. One day, a teacher told in class that creation came from the past we neglect, that is how I started to contact a monster fan just like me.

You can almost see this transparent glasses built vendor selling this special Taiwanese chewing gums everywhere in Taiwan. It’s called the “betel nuts stands”. Then a betel nuts girl is there to match the male customers’ sexual fantasies. In the tiny glasses house, the girls talk about stories of themselves.

I did not want to be born, suddenly I was born, I did not want to die, suddenly died. More than 500 years ago, during the Ming Dynasty, a samurai raped a little girl. Five hundred years later, the little girl's pet white cat cultivates into essence, to help the little girl's ghost kill the descendants of the samurai. If the little girl wants to be reborn, she will need to die ten lives.

12 strangers, invited through an open call, join a portrait party led by a counseling psychologist. Wearing the outfit they wish to be remembered in and bringing a meaningful item, they use their last portrait as a starting point to share life’s most important yet unspoken stories.

Chronotopia is a film featuring dual English and Taiwanese narrations. Linking disparate twentieth-century Taiwanese histories, it employs an architectural framework to invoke Lee Guang-Hui, an Indigenous Taiwanese soldier who fought for the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II and lived in isolation on Indonesia’s Morotai island until 1974, believing the war had never ended. His return after three decades to a transformed Taiwan—whose language he no longer spoke—casts him as a figure seemingly outside history. His multiple names—Teruo Nakamura in Japanese and Attun Palalin in Ami—mark the shifting spaces, identities, and temporalities that structure Chronotopia.

After a serious car accident caused by her fiance, Jack, Sharon was left with paraplegia. With her worsening condition and Jack's increasing burden as a caretaker, Sharon began to rethink about their relationship.

A Golden Harvest Award Winner short film.

Kabukicho, located on the east side of Shinjuku, is one of the more famous red light districts in Tokyo. There are over 3000 registered bars, and at least 1000 of them are Taiwanese-owned. In the late 1970s, over 10,000 Taiwanese women left for Japan for work and wealth. Most of them settled in Shinjuku. The women worked over 20 years at bars to send money back home

This film is Taiwan’s first protest music documentary, examining Jiao Gong Band 交工樂隊. Jiao Gong Band initially received attention from their efforts opposing the Meinong Dam project. After a brief pause in the Dam issue, Jiao Gong began following farm and farming issues, with their musical style quickly gaining increased popularity. This film discusses the uneasy situation faced by Taiwan’s farm youth. The youth that sets out to the city seeking to develop themselves carry feelings of homesickness from leaving their farm and land; on returning to their hometown after the bubble economy, they continue to push the elder generation to leave the village. Aside from this, because of their difficult social status, farm youth can often only search for Southeast Asian “foreign brides” when seeking marriage. Within the film, new residents (新住民) discuss their feelings and mindset in moving to Taiwan and collaborate with Jiao Gong throughout the album’s recording process.

The artist, who never met her grandfather, traces his presence through a photograph and images from Yasukuni Shrine. Guided by her father’s fragmented memories, she reconstructs an absent figure. Through reversals of images, bodies, and landscapes, the film explores shifting perspectives, revealing hidden layers of time, history, and memory.

In the late 1970s, public concern over cultural heritage preservation began to emerge in Taiwan. During his tenure at China Television Company (中國電視公司), Chang Chao-Tang (張照堂) produced a special feature for the news program “Sixty Minutes” (《六十分鐘》), documenting sites including the Chen Residence in Yongjing, Changhua (彰化永靖陳厝), the Ye Family Octagonal House in Yanshui, Chiayi (嘉義鹽水葉厝八角樓), the tomb of Zheng Chonghe in Houlong, Miaoli (苗栗後龍鄭崇和墓園), the tomb of Wang Delu in Xingang, Chiayi (嘉義新港王得祿墓園), and the controversial relocation of the Lin An-Tai Historic House in Taipei (台北林安泰古厝). Filmed with Christopher Doyle (杜可風) and featuring interviews with Ma Yi-Kung (馬以工) and Lee Chien-Lang (李乾朗), the program documented the growing tensions between modernization, urban development, and historical preservation in postwar Taiwan.

In a town devastated and lacking energy, a young adventurer and a mysterious little robot set out on a journey toward a towering structure. Legend says this tower holds an orb of infinite energy. After a series of adventures, they ultimately retrieve the energy orb and save their crumbling hometown.

The film primarily tells the story of a financial dispute between a large conglomerate and a criminal organization. The protagonist infiltrates a criminal organization and uses his charm to seduce the wife of the gang leader, thus instigating conflict between two major criminal organizations.

Umei and Haluwey embarked on an artistic journey much later in life, exploring the realms of art, acting, and ethnic song-singing. Now, they have even started to write songs. This is a chronicle of two mothers pursuing their dreams. By taking a series of courses, they come to embrace their inner beauty, struggles, and self worth. Through songwriting and creative expression, Umei and Haluwey take a profound introspection of their lives, telling their stories as daughters-in-law, wives, mothers, and daughters.

“Journey into the Mine” (礦之旅) is a 1981 documentary directed by Chang Chao-Tang (張照堂). Part of the “Journey Through Images” series (映象之旅), it documents the Ruìsān Coal Mine (瑞三煤礦) in Houtong, Ruifang (瑞芳侯硐). Using a portable ENG camera, the crew descended 600 meters underground to record miners working amid heat, coal dust, and gas hazards. Rejecting elite-centered television perspectives, the film foregrounds the resilience of working-class laborers. Its essayistic voice-over is paired with ECM jazz and blues, creating a distinctive tone. In 1982, it won the Golden Bell Award (金鐘獎) for Best Educational and Cultural Program. A rebroadcast added footage of the Neihu Futian Coal Mine disaster (內湖福田煤礦災變), producing a stark dialogue between policy narrative and industrial tragedy. Its footage was later used in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1986 film Dust in the Wind”(戀戀風塵).

As the mycelium spreads, an undercurrent of desire and arrogance subtly emerges, intertwining and diverging continuously with the passage of time...

On her city balcony, Audrey delights in the flutter of tiny birds—fluffing their feathers, chattering, and sneaking tangerine bites. Their chirps sound like cheerful hellos and playful spats, inspiring her to invent a bird-language translator that unlocks their secret conversations.

In the twilight of British Hong Kong, Cheung Tak Chi, a master intermediary shaped by the city‘s relentless pulse, seeks closure with a past love amidst his final, lethal entanglement.

Ripples Apart is the story of windsurfer Chang Hao, who grew up in the Mountains of Nantou, the only region in Taiwan with no coast. Chang and his Australian coach, Alex Mowday, share a unique and rare bond, two athletes separated by years of age and very different cultures, but who hunt the same Olympic dream. The road to the Olympics is long and difficult. Alex and Chang Hao must beat the odds to qualify, training on the small island of Penghu, off the coast of Taiwan, battling the wind and waves and searching for perfection in the sport of their dreams.

A couple, through a twist of fate, are forced to confront each other’s true desires.

"Can I be your boyfriend?" The boy hears the man he admires say this to him. However, due to his past as a prostitute, the boy constantly moves from one man to another, always getting abandoned in the end. He decides to leave before this man grows tired of him as well. Years later, the boy meets the man again. The man has changed a lot and seems to have forgot him. The boy hesitates, wondering whether he should rekindle the man’s memory or start a new relationship with him under a different identity...

This father was a loser, who abandoned his wife and children and finally wandered and fooled around as a taxi driver.