Tag: 2020s

The Last Footage (Arkar Soe Oo, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

Posted on by

“Show some respect for things you don’t understand,” a creepy which intones, admonishing a group of city slickers fetching up in the forest with a dangerous disrespect for the natural world and what lies beyond in Arkar Soe Oo’s creepy found footage folk horror, The Last Footage. The first found footage films from Myanmar though apparently made for the international market rather than the purely domestic, the film is entirely shot with 4K camera-equipped glasses neatly juxtaposing an entirely new technology with ancient folk beliefs and ritual practices.

The opening sequence, however, seems to hint at the variety of uses these glasses can be put to from a young man taking a picture of his parents to another who surreptitiously Googles “how to talk to girls” while staring at an attractive woman in a coffee shop. A group of ghost hunters uses them to capture footage while walking around a former conference centre where large numbers of people died in an explosion before apparently meeting a sticky end after running into a weird cult. The ID numbers given suggest this footage is being stored somewhere else and is therefore somehow accessible externally.

Aung Khant seems to have bought the glasses just because they’re the cool new thing rather than a desire to capture something in particular. His friends describe him as being “obsessed with strange stuff” and recall a fairly disastrous trip they picked to a destination he picked, but don’t particularly seem to mind him documenting their every move through his glasses which, he points out, have excellent battery life. That comes in handy because the electricity’s been out at the strange little hut they eventually make it to after the coach they were travelling on breaks down right outside the forest.

Thu Ya has been left a sizeable amount of land on a former rubber plantation owned by his late grandfather. He plans to open a resort there, and suggests the group’s latest trip be to go check it out. In a way Thu Ya has received a toxic inheritance that he is ill-equipped to deal with, never really considering that his grandfather may have abandoned this place for a reason or that there really may be something dark and ancient lurking in the woods. They are all fairly affluent, educated urbanites who only joke about supernatural threats and are flippant about folk beliefs. Despite being urged not to do anything to disrupt the balance of the forest, two of the group engage in some black magic rituals as a joke using cow’s blood and candles they brought from home.

Stepping into the witch’s cottage, they may as well have entered another world as she makes cryptic pronouncements that “it has awakened” and there’s nothing to be done now except accept one’s fate. Obsessed with black magic rituals herself in an effort to resurrect her late son, the witch isn’t really interested in helping the gang or saving their lives. Beginning to realise they probably should have listened to Thu Ya’s uncle Ko Nyo who warned them that the forest was not a safe place, Aung Khant and his friends have little choice other than to do battle with the evil they’ve awakened in the hope of rescuing a missing child even if they themselves may not survive.

As the wearer of the glasses, Aung Khant is there to be an audience stand-in providing an immersive POV that gives the impression of actually being present. As such he is a fairly passive presence following those who take part in the action so he can witness and recored it through his glasses. In a sense, he embodies the camera and the fact that it is mounted in his glasses means that it can continue capturing images without his involvement. All he can really do, however, is watch as his friends desperately try to come up with solutions after deciding that they can’t run from this particular beast and will have to their best to fight it. As the witch had said, however, there are some things that cannot be understood but must be respected. They will pay a heavy price for their lack of respect for traditional folk practices and an ancient past from which they have become entirely disconnected. 

The Last Footage screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Seoul Guardians (서울의 밤, Cho Chul-young, Kim Jong-woo, Kim Shin-wan, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

Posted on by

Normality is such a fragile thing. It only takes a few seconds for everything to fall apart and the life you’ve known until now to completely disappear. Facing intense personal scrutiny and frustrated with opposition lawmakers doing exactly what they’re supposed to do in a democracy by opposing policies they disagree with, President Yoon Suk-Yeol announced martial law via a television broadcast late at night after many people had already gone to bed or at any rate were not particularly paying attention to the news. 

This was the first time that Martial Law had been declared since Chun Doo-hwan’s military coup in 1979. The democracy that the nation had carefully nurtured since Chun’s downfall in 1987 was under threat while Yoon ironically described opposition parties as a “legislative dictatorship” for blocking his policies. Following the declaration, ordinary citizens began to make their way to the National Assembly building to protest, but at the same time Yoon’s faction dispatched the police and army to encircle the building. Once martial law is declared, the president is supposed to attend the assembly for a free vote confirm its deployment, which Yoon failed to do while police and army made it difficult for lawmakers to enter the building and take their place to vote leading many, often not so young, officials to vault walls simply to enter the building. 

Comprised almost entirely of on-the-ground and stock footage and television news broadcasts, Kim Jong-woo, Kim Shin-wan, Cho Chul-young’s documentary viscerally depicts the sense of chaos and desperation of that night as the general population and lawmakers trapped inside the budding begin to realise that they have only this moment to stop the impending tragedy that Yoon has set in motion. “Remember Gwangju” some of the protestors shout. Interspersed with footage from 3rd December are flashes of newsreels from the Gwangju Massacre in 1980 in which state forces fired on protestors asking for the lifting the martial law that had been reinstated by Chun’s regime after he took power in a military coup shortly after the previous dictator, Park Chun-hee, was assassinated by the head of his own security team. 

The similarities between the two protests are striking as both utter near identical chants with the only real way to tell which footage is from 1979 and which from 2024 is by the video quality and the clothes that people are wearing. The night of 3rd December could have turned out so differently if even a single thing had gone wrong. A soldier’s gun going off or policeman losing his temper could have provoked further violence and brought about a world of nightly curfews and curbed freedoms that seems almost unthinkable in the present day. A curfew has already been declared active from 11pm, so all of these people are already breaking the law, but they choose to stay anyway in order to defend this fragile democracy.

There are also, of course, those who are there to support Yoon and feel as if he’s been unfairly treated. To them, he’s only right to do what he’s done because those “commies” on the other side wouldn’t let him get on with his work. By including footage from Yoon’s impeachment hearing, the documentary makes clear that this is not something that ended in the early hours of 4th December with Yoon recognising the unanimous vote to lift martial law, but an ongoing battle to resist authoritarianism and protect democracy however imperfect that democracy may also be. The question then is how robust these systems really are and if Yoon actually will be removed for having committed this offence against the normal functioning of government with a blatant power grab that effectively constitutes and attempt coup.

All that was really standing between Yoon and martial law was the will of the people who were willing to risk their safety and comfort and preserve their freedom and democratic rights. They looked back to those who had lost their lives in Gwangju and said, “We will remember you. We will not allow this to happen again.” In this way, as the voiceover from co-director Kim Jong-woo points out, the dead save the living in a very real living memory of the costs of authoritarianism. Though the film may play out like a thriller as those inside the assembly set up baracades fearful that paratroopers will storm the building and others call out to the young soldiers to obey their conscious and walk away, it is never flippant about the serious of this moment, nor the truth that a significant minority continue support Yoon and his policies which leaves ordinary people once again the guardians of a fragile democracy that maybe shattered at any moment.

The Seoul Guardians screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Colony (군체, Yeon Sang-ho, 2026)

Posted on by

“Can you handle the freedom to be an outcast?” asks the villain of Yeon Sang-ho’s zombie-esque drama Colony (군체, Gunche) who believes that tragedies are caused by “imperfect communication.” He may not be entirely wrong, but his instinct to destroy all traces of individuality and replace them with a hive mind might not necessarily solve the problem in the way he implies it will, especially as it transpires that everyone will effectively be pulled into his own consciousness.

To that extent, the “zombies” in this film are representatives of social conformity, but perhaps they could also be read as an AI army with “psycho” scientist Suh (Koo Kyo-hwan) as the prompter. His big idea is bringing about a second cognitive revolution that emerges from a desire to repair the body so that those who have developed a disability would be healed. This is also, it turns out, a byproduct of being inducted into Suh’s hive where humanity must start from scratch evolving all over again. But at the same time, it seems like members of the hive still need to actively share information rather than simply having access to it. Suh gives them commands by shaking his head, while the zombies often stop dead and stare at the ceiling with their mouths open as if they were uploading something to the cloud. At one point, they’re seen accessing a computer to get the location of a room where one of their targets is hiding which demonstrates how far they’ve evolved in their ability to use tools, but at the same time they already have members of the security team in their hive. One would assume that they would already be familiar with the building’s layout and so the closest zombies could just start making their way there. This communication is still “imperfect” and Suh may choose not to share what he knows with the others anyway.

Professor Se-Jeong (Jun Ji-hyun), however, has never been one to go along with the group. Her exasperated ex-husband (Go Soo) complains that she’s always doing things that make people hate her, but still cared enough for Se-jeong to try to set her up with another steady job before he moves to America with his current wife and child. Which is all to say, she is very much prepared to be an outcast in a society in which challenging the system or disrupting group harmony are often taboos. She’s disadvantaged in her career because she turned another professor in for exploiting his research staff and misappropriating funds, meaning that others don’t necessarily want to work with her. She will, however, stand up for what’s right even when others won’t.

The government, meanwhile, is portrayed as another kind of group think if one paralysed by indecision because, unlike Se-jeong, they aren’t prepared to be hated by the public for making a call they disagree with even if it’s the right thing to do. With the building sealed off, orders have been given not to harm any of the infected in case they can be saved when they retrieve the vaccine from Suh, but it quickly becomes clear that the victims are most likely braindead and cannot be healed. Nevertheless, the policeman who takes Suh into custody eventually begins shooting his own team members, sacrificing them to protect Suh, while rescue teams deliberately leave other survivors behind. “It’s a shame,” one of the officers in control laments after seeing Se-jeong dart into a storage cupboard when the rescuers retreat with Suh, making it clear they have no intention of going back for her even though she’s been helping them retrieve the vaccine.

Her best ally turns out to be another female scientist, her ex’s wife Gong (Shin Hyun-been). Though you might expect the two women to loathe each other, they in fact get along quite well and have some affection for each other that makes Gong increasingly unwilling to toe the government line and leave Se-jeong to be devoured by the zombies. They are at least willing to stand up for the scientific argument and do what’s right, even if it’s not going to be popular and will make them outcasts for the rest of their lives. Someone has to be willing to make these difficult decisions from a position of rationality, the film seems to say. Nevertheless, it also argues for a slightly less prejudicial, more equal world in championing other kinds of outsiders such as a woman who uses a wheelchair and finds an ideal fit for her skillset in the zombie apocalypse and an old man who proves to be far more physically adept than an ageist society gave him credit for.  “I guess we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Se-jeong admits acknowledging that it will not end just with the quelling of this particular zombie horde.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Mouths (口に関するアンケート, Takashi Shimizu, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

Posted on by

“Do you think the mouth is the source of the trouble?”  A survey asks at the end of Takashi Shimizu’s haunting horror, The Mouths (口に関するアンケート, Kuchi ni Kansuru Anketo). Assuming for the moment that we’re talking about the human mouth, they can indeed get you into a lot of trouble, but at the same time that trouble starts somewhere much deeper down, so perhaps it isn’t really the mouth that’s to blame either, rather its owner who unwisely chose to make their unspoken thoughts spoken. 

According to the editor of a mystery magazine (Tokio Emoto), that really might be the curse. We project our negative emotions onto an object and grant it a kind of supernatural power that might in other ways be entirely manmade. People have decided a creepy old tree in a cemetery is “cursed”, but it’s become fashionable among young people to challenge themselves by walking up to it. Though the tree once signalled good fortune, people soon started using it to curse others by voicing their petty resentments, but perhaps it’s putting all these dark thoughts into the tree that’s made it a kind of repository for human fear and loathing. All those we meet who went to see the tree took someone with them that they wanted to suffer, though they also of course ended up suffering themselves.

A group of students sets out to see it full of bravado expecting a spooky night where nothing will actually happen, or at least nothing that they don’t make happen for themselves. But beneath the camaraderie, there are cracks in their relationship with what amounts to a complicated love square in which Tatsuya (Keito Tsuna) has started dating Shota’s (Rihito Itagaki) ex An (Ai Yoshikawa), but Shota wants her back. Mirei (MOMONA), meanwhile, whose name contains a sound that is associated with the supernatural, resents An mostly for disrupting the dynamics of the group and her relationships with both men though without really declaring any kind of romantic allegiance. An is not altogether a sympathetic presence and brands Mirei’s potentially psychic abilities as “lame”, but nevertheless falls victim to the tree, loses her mind, and then eventually disappears. 

The left-behind trio do their best to find her, but are really searching themselves questioning their relationships, desires, and what they really wanted out of visiting in the tree. Shota first heard about it from his colleague, Kawase (Tomoki Nishiyama). Who visited with a “friend” (Shoot Mori) who appears to be bullying him in the hope that he would get his comeuppance only for both of them to be left haunted, constantly fearing the reappearance of the tree’s animalistic woman who threatens to devour them. In some ways, the monstrous woman stands in for the dark heart of nature, seemingly in tune with cicadas and their strange humming, not different from An’s, which characterises a Japanese summer. The summer is also, of course, when this world and the other are at their closest.

Another question the survey asks is if you would share this story with a friend. Kawase, after all, shared it with Shota almost as if tempting him toward the tree, prodding him to act on his basest emotions. As the magazine editor says, perhaps the real villains are people like him who irresponsibly spread this kind of information and help to create urban legends that unwittingly draw people towards the darkness in their own hearts. He and a police detective (Shido Nakamura) nominally looking into An’s disappearance search for more concrete answers, but in the end come to no real conclusions wondering what it was these people saw in the tree that eventually took them to such a dark place.

Shimizu maintains the episodic structure of the source novel with several different chapters recounting the events from one person’s point of view in a theatrical monologue that at first seems as if it must be testimony for the detective, but later turns out not to be even if the detective listens to the stories they’ve recorded on his dictaphone. The survey also asks us why we think they recorded them themselves on their phones, which is a question often left unasked in genre films in which we gloss over these kinds of practical questions knowing that they do so as a storytelling device. Sooner or later they all declare that they have said all that they had to say, if as they were a kind of ghost in the machine about to dissipate as soon as the tale is told. But really, it’s the same question as why they talked to the tree. They needed some means of releasing all these dark thoughts, but releasing them didn’t really help. In fact, it seems to have made things quite a lot worse. Perhaps if they’d been able to talk to each other in a healthier way, there’d no be no need for cursed trees or the supernatural dread that comes with having transgressed on something no human is supposed to see. But then again, this darkness is a part of human nature as much as its part of a strange and arcane world. Perhaps it is your own mouth that will damn you in the end.

The Mouths screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

When You Open the Door (とびらをあけたら, Eriko Katagiri, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

Posted on by

Maybe mankind wasn’t really supposed to live indoors. Miki (Serena Motola) has a job at an architectural firm that mainly seems to involve drawing straight lines with a ruler and pencil. Her boss praises her for her “distinctive” drawing style. Yet Miki seems out of place at the office, as if her consciousness were somewhere else and only her body physically present. She is mostly silent, and does not accompany her colleagues when they all head off for lunch, preferring a solitary bun which in itself leads her to a strange destination. 

In Eriko Katagiri’s haunting drama When You Open the Door (とびらをあけたら, Tobira ow Aketara), it’s never quite clear how much is actually happening within an objective reality, and how much only inside Miki’s mind. She seems to be called back to the past and a childhood memory that is both comforting and nostalgic, but somehow ominous. Miki often appears to be slightly behind those around her, giving vague answers to questions after a long pause, such as when she tells her colleagues that the reason she’s late back from lunch is that she was bitten by a wolf. Her colleagues are confused, but they take what says at face value and set about trying to treat the “wound” though they can see no evidence of a wolf bite at the spot Miki points out. 

Nevertheless this “wolf bite”, echoing an incident in her childhood, seems to awaken something within her that has a deeper connection to the natural world. But this abrupt change in her character seems to worry her live-in boyfriend who explains that wolves are extinct in contemporary Japan. He takes her to a psychiatrist, but even he seems to entertain the idea that she is actually possessed by a wolf spirit. Meanwhile, this apparent possession introduces her to a community of older women, apparent devotees of an ascetic cult who howl at the moon in praise of “Toya-sama”. This secret society seems to offer her a refuge, a place where she can be supported by those like herself while communing with the natural world.

Her boyfriend’s desire to “cure” her is then perhaps an attempt to force her back into a more urban modernity and conventional femininity. Nevertheless, following the advice from the psychiatrist is in reality little different to the ascetic practice of the Itako spirit mediums who hid themselves away in caves without food and sleep in order to invite the wolf spirit in. His own lingering fear of abandonment seems to play a part in his isolation of her which also turns violent, while she in turn struggles with the decision of whether to open the door to whatever is waiting on the other side or spend her life in the comparative safety of a closed-off space.

But letting the wolf in, or perhaps out, also seems to return Miki more fully to the world. Though she is hungrier, devouring chicken drumsticks, she speaks less haltingly and has more to say. She seems to move with purpose and is no longer restricted to repeating conversations she’s had with others. Werewolves, a mother explains to her young son, look like people but eat human hearts. Perhaps this is what Miki has always been, but it’s not clear whether this is a largely metaphorical desire for human connection or romantic domination or a literally bloody act of dismemberment as implied by the fate of her childhood dolls.

Shadowy presences seem to pound on the walls of Miki’s consciousness requesting entry, and the film appears to take its cues from J-horror in exploring the pressing anxiety of darkened corners and lonely places while leaning in to darkness inherent in nature and things too ancient for us to fully understand. Even so, there is something quite captivating about the embracing of traditional female dance that brings about Miki’s transformation, engendering a liberation from the constraints of contemporary civility and acceptance of her authentic self as reflected back at her. Dream or reality, Miki’s consciousness seems to have undergone a change that leaves her happier, less alone, and more present if in what may be a purely subjective reality having learned to embrace her inner wolf.

When You Open the Door screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

The Mutation (사랑의 탄생, Shin Su-won, 2025) [Fantasia 2026)

Posted on by

Two people largely excluded from mainstream society bond over a shared sense of loss and loneliness in Shin Su-won’s lighthearted road trip movie, The Mutation (사랑의 탄생). Though the English-language title may sound a little harsh, hinting at some kind of science fiction dystopia, the film is in other ways as the Korean title “The Birth of Love,” implies about self-acceptance and mutual solidarity among those that society has continues to other and reject.

The Korean title is quoted in each of the lives of the protagonists, Se-oh (Han Hyun-min), a man with dark skin who was born to two Korean parents, and Sora (Lee Zoo-young), a gay woman whose former partner took her own life after being pressured into a heteronormative marriage by her conservative mother. Se-oh has been rejected by his family as his father refuses to accept him as his son despite his mother’s assurance that she has remained faithful him. He tries asking an old friend of his mother’s for answers, but she tells him that what matters is only that he was born from love. Sora, meanwhile, discovers a letter written by her late partner Min-ji as a omechild that she titled “the birth of love” and recorded her growing feelings for a female classmate along with the fear that her parents would find out.

Sora’s difference is not visibly obvious in the way that Se-oh’s is, but she still finds that she is excluded from mainstream society. She says that she makes tables because they’re something to be shared rather than used selfishly, but it seems that few people are willing to come to hers despite her instructions to Se-oh that if he got a bigger table for his apartment people would soon come to sit around it. It does however signal her own openness and desire for connection, even if that desire is often rejected or goes unmet. After agreeing to accompany Se-oh on his trip, she too has somewhere she does not have the courage to go alone. On returning to the town where Min-ji lived, she discovers her mother being hassled in the market by a group of religious people who appear to be aware of exactly how her daughter died and why but berate her for not raising her “better”. Min-ji’s mother had thought that if she married, Min-ji would settle down and live a “normal” life, but in the end Min-ji could not live that way. Her mother is now filled with regrets wishing she had accepted her daughter for who she was despite what others may have said in their small and conservative town where the local pastor holds sway.

Min-ji’s mother did not tell Sora of her death for some time nor did she invite her to the funeral, hoping that no one would find out. Se-oh wasn’t invited to his mother’s funeral either and his name is conspicuously absent from the list of official mourners at the funeral hall. He is continually treated as an outsider as strangers automatically address him in English. It never occurs to them to someone who looks like him may have been born and raised in Korea and know no other language, and as such they reject his Koreanness. This has also meant that he has struggled to find employment and has been restricted to doing a series of precarious casual labour jobs, the latest of which is ironically playing the white tiger at a local amusement park. People like me better when I wear a mask, he says, which perhaps something Sora can also understand.

But she also says that Min-ji was the only person she ever knew who didn’t wear one, implying that it may not be possible to survive in this society as an authentic person without some kind of boundary between oneself and others. Nevertheless, through their gentle road trip, the pair begin to come to terms with the past and also with themselves in gaining a level of self-acceptance that allows them to move forward, together or apart. Warm and gentle in spirit, the film makes the most of its idyllic country settings while focusing on the simple power of human connection in the face of a world that can often be harsh and unforgiving of those it perceives to be somehow other.

The Mutation screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish (我未許願先吹蠟燭, Chao Koi Wang & Hu Chin-Yen, 2025)

Posted on by

“Money can’t solve everything,” according to Jojo’s teacher, but life without it is certainly very difficult in Chao Koi-Wang and Hu Chin-Yen’s heartwarming drama I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish. The film’s title perhaps bears out the sense of disappointment and futility among those trapped on the margins of contemporary Macanese society where life is one great crap shoot and the only way out of their straitened circumstances is to win big at one of the area’s famous casinos. 

But as recently released ex-offender Hua points out, there are wins and losses in gambling and more often than not they lost. Jojo is living with her elderly grandmother following her parents’ divorce and father’s disappearance after fleeing to avoid loan sharks who now pester them for their money. Jojo’s father told her he was scammed by his business partner, but her grandmother suggests it was down to a gambling problem. It’s ironic then that Jojo’s proposed solution is to use an insanely large number of “dead chips”, those that can’t be cashed in but can be used to place bets, to get rich quick and pay off her father’s debts so he can come and the family can live in a comfortable environment. The only snag is that, thankfully, they don’t yet let small children enter casinos.

While it’s clear that everyone seems to be feeling a sense of desperation, there are also those who help others such as the landlord that lets Jojo’s grandmother rent a makeshift rooftop apartment cheaply while even the evil loan shark turns out to have a compassionate side. Nevertheless, Jojo’s attempts to lean on adults for help largely fail, beginning with her hypocritical teacher who criticises gambling but agrees to help her then pockets the money for himself telling her he lost it all. He’s later seen looking in an estate agent’s window with his girlfriend, implying he wanted the money to buy a flat because, realistically speaking, there’s no way he could do that on a teacher’s salary and without the means to own property things like marriage and a domestic life also become more difficult. 

Hua, who came to Macau from Taiwan for love, also believes his economic situation caused the breakdown of his marriage and is desperate to win his wife back. Fearful she’d leave him, he committed a scam to buy a flat she moved out of when he went to jail. He’s now renting it out to a collection of migrant workers like himself to cover the mortgage while working as a debt collector. Yet he too is touched by Jojo’s plight and agrees to help her, though even he is tempted by the idea of scamming her out of her all money. Perhaps he sympathises with her because they are both in effect waiting for someone who likely won’t return, he his wife and she her father. As such, they form a kind of familial bond with Hua trying to take care of Jojo and her grandmother while keeping half an eye on the prospect of paying off his mortgage. 

On the other hand, it says something about societal indifference that Jojo goes on living on her own while her grandmother’s in hospital and their electricity has been cut off because she’s not around to pay the bill. They need someone to sign a consent form so her grandmother can have surgery, but there don’t appear to be any other responsible adults in Jojo’s life. An attempt to ask her mother, who has remarried and has a new family, proves more traumatic than anything else. No one except the loan sharks appears to check in her at all. She is resourceful and proactive, but also still a child and largely unable to understand the long-term implications of her plan or that gambling is a dangerous habit that, as Hua says, can ruin lives.

In that way the film is subtly critical of Macau’s economic dependence on the casino industry and the wealthy inequality that comes along with it. Jojo is only a little bit worried about the owner of the chips coming back for them, while Hua suggests they have belonged to someone so rich they probably just forgot about it. Gambling is something rich people do he says, and after all you can only really do it responsibly by playing with money you can afford to lose which neither of them have. Still, they keep rolling the dice anyway, hoping that their numbers will come up. Grandma may try to caution them, revealing a mistake she made in her own youth born of fear and desperation, that greed will always come back to bit you, but there is at least a sense of tempered optimism in their mantra of “lose today, win tomorrow,” that keeps hope alive when all else seems bleak.

I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish screens as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Tradition Chinese / English subtitles)

Deep Quiet Room (深度安靜, Shen Ko-shang, 2025)

Posted on by

Reeling after his wife’s unexpected suicide, a bereft husband begins to discover the destructive effects of unresolved trauma amid the oppressive patriarchal social system of Taiwanese society in Shen Ko-shang’s hard-hitting drama, Deep Quiet Room (深度安靜, shēndù ānjìng). The “deep quiet room” of the title is both literal in referring to that at the back of the couple’s flat they had designated as a nursery where pregnant wife Yu-ting cocoons herself, and to the psychological space into which her husband cannot enter.

Told from Yu-Ming’s (Joseph Chang) perspective, the film centres on his sense of confusion and inability to understand the psychological changes that his wife underwent following her pregnancy which led to her taking her own life. Through repeated flashbacks, it becomes clear that Yu-Ting (Ariel Lin) was suffering from depression and uncertain whether she wanted to give birth to this child. Though everything may have seemed normal on the surface, we can see that there is something not quite right in the way that Yu-Ting interacts with her parents while cryptic allusions are made to two other sisters who are for some reason no longer part of the family while Yu-Ting’s mother is otherwise an entirely silent and passive presence.

This silence and passivity may stand in for that of Taiwanese women, or least those of her generation, who find themselves powerless against male authority figures such as husbands and fathers. When Yu-Ting expresses anxiety that their baby may be a girl, Yu-Ming assumes that his overbearing mother has said something to her reflecting a cultural bias that favours sons over daughters. Yu-Ming appears to not to share it while the doctors at the hospital also stress that the sex is irrelevant as long as the child is healthy. But when Yu-Ting’s father (Chin Shih-chieh) states that girls are better, there is something uniquely chilling in his words that further deepens Yu-Ting’s dread and sense of responsibility in bringing a little girl into this kind of world.

The father cannot be questioned and his home is filled with silence. This is the deep quiet room in which the film seems to suggest all Taiwanese women are to one degree or another trapped inside. Yu-Ming necessarily exists on the other side of it and is to some extent unaware of its existence. He is frustrated that his wife shuts him out and desperately wants to her to share with him what it is that makes her so unhappy and prevents her from embracing the kind of domestic happiness that he is seeking to create. When Yu-Ting unexpectedly snaps that she hates herself for being unable to abandon her father, Yu-Ming seems bemused and replies that it’s a daughter’s filial duty to care for him. His own decision, which seems odd to others, to continue caring for Yu-Ting’s father, who has dementia and therefore can no longer answer for whatever he may have done in the past, is another symptom of his desire to maintain this ideal of a traditional family. 

What he discovers therefore implodes Yu-Ming’s conception of the values that he assumed underpinned his society and his own role within them. His eventual decision to abandon Yu-Ting’s father is symbolic of an ultimate desire to reject and escape from this patriarchal superstructure of which he has also been a part. Yu-Ting’s two sisters chose other paths to escaping their trauma, the oldest spending most of her adult life in a psychiatric institution, and the younger fleeing abroad severing all ties with her family. She has married a man who is not Taiwanese and is living a happy family life overseas. Informed of her mother and sister’s deaths, she simply replies “R.I.P” and that it’s no longer any concern of hers. She has sealed her childhood off in its own deep quiet room and now refuses to open the door, suggesting that the only path to survival lies in exiting this system entirely and never looking back.

As such Shen paints a fairly bleak view of the contemporary society as mired in outdated patriarchal social codes while women like Yu-Ting are left with no recourse. She cannot share this part of herself even with those close to her, not even with her sisters who suffered the same way she did but have each withdrawn themselves into different kinds of isolation, and must therefore carry the burden alone. There is however a glimmer of light in the otherwise grim conclusion that suggests a desire at least to exorcise this trauma by abandoning the patriarchal order and building something new in its place.

Deep Quiet Room screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Last Night in Taipei (明日的過客, Kuo Cheng-chui, 2025)

Posted on by

Three old friends who haven’t seen each other in years are forced to confront the reality of their lives after a chance encounter in Kuo Cheng-chui’s Last Night in Taipei (明日的過客, míngrì dì guòkè). Less an odyssey through the midnight city, the film is really more about finding accommodation with a sense of middle-aged regret and letting go of what might have been, though it does not necessarily seem that any of them are really happier after dealing with their unresolved feelings.

Blanche’s marriage has begun to turn cold owing to her husband’s deference to his mother who is upset that they have yet to conceive a child and continually dropping off Chinese medicine to help them along. After arguing with her husband Ben when a date night is abruptly cancelled she decides to stay in the city alone where she immediately runs into an ex, Jake, who is on a trip home from Paris where he as lived for the last few years. To begin with, it isn’t quite clear whether Blanche has actually met him at all or is just fantasising about what her life would be like if she’d stayed with him rather than ending up Ben whose chief advantage seems to be his wealth.

But Jake is similarly feeling lost in that he feels out of place in both Paris and Taipei and is perceived as a foreigner in both places. Meanwhile, he’s harbouring unresolved feelings about the end of his relationship with Blanche. While wandering though the city, the pair walk into a bar where their old friend Axin is currently working. His current girlfriend, Mao Mao, later joins them, but their relationship is not all it seems as Mao Mao essentially hired Axin to play the part of her boyfriend for 99 days to make an ex jealous and is now having difficulty dealing with the end of the arrangement.

The trio met when they were all aspiring actors, and they have to one extent or another each failed to fulfil their dreams. Only Axin is seriously persevering with performing, but he to is coming to the conclusion that he has failed as an actor and it’s time for him to leave Taipei. Blanche, too, regrets not having had the opportunity to play a proper role and is feeling unsatisfied with her married life. She wonders if this is all there really is and her entire life is already decided. Perhaps she only stays with Ben because it’s become convenient while the risks of leaving outweigh the benefits. Jake too always felt as if Taiwan was a liminal space, not somewhere he’d stay indefinitely, so he never put down roots. He reflects how much the city has changed, almost if it did so deliberately to give them memories as these spaces seem to retreat from them back into the past. 

The frequent references to missiles and intrusions into their airspace echo this sense of restless anxiety that this current existence might soon disappear or be taken from them. The sense of impending doom forces the three friends to reassess their bonds and missed connections providing an opportunity for at least partial emotional honesty even if these unresolved feelings are not fully addressed. Mao Mao too must reevaluate what she was looking for in her relationship with Axin in which he too was perhaps merely putting off the act of confronting himself and his life.

Though they may each discover a way of moving forward, no one seems all that happy about it. Blanche considers leaving her marriage, but ultimately stays perhaps because she lacks the courage to actually do it and resigns herself to an unfulfilling future. Jake still feels adrift and blames himself for the failure of his relationship with Blanche, realising that he let her down out of fear and immaturity. Axin too decides to move on, but is left with a sense of regret, while Mao Mao too can only resolve to start over again from day one. In some ways the friendship between them might have been repaired with the air cleared, but on the other hand as Axin says real friends don’t necessarily need to be in contact all the time and each seems to be left a little lonelier even than before in having closed a door to the past with seemingly none to open to the future.

Last Night in Taipei screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (dialogue free)

White Flowers and Fruits (白の花実, Yukari Sakamoto, 2025)

Posted on by

The abrupt suicide of a young woman at a protestant Christian boarding school causes those around her to reassess their reality in Yukari Sakamoto’s poetic drama White Flowers and Fruits (白の花実, Shiro no Kajitsu). Perhaps done a disservice by the literalness of its English language title, the film is on one level as the Japanese title implies about the disconnect between form and content, or the extent to which we project ourselves onto others and see only what we want or expect to see.

Anna (Miro) is someone who says she can see “what others can’t”. This most obviously refers to her ability to see ghosts, though of course we can’t be sure whether she is telling the truth or hallucinating reflections of her own anxieties. In any case, she has a rebellious streak which is why her mother has transferred her to a Christian boarding school. “It’s your last chance,” she tells her, implying that Anna has already been expelled from several other institutions for her refusal to conform. Anna, however, promptly discovers an angry ghost hovering directly behind her new roommate Rika (Nico Aoto) and thereafter refuses to the “pointless” rules of the school including wearing her ribbon necktie.

She and “lovely” Rika are then contrasted as model student and its reverse. It’s Rika who remarks that being at odds with everyone all the time must be exhausting and her life might be easier if she made more of an effort to get along with people, but Anna claims that she is simply unlike Rika and this is something she is unable to do even if she wanted to. “Why don’t you try being me?” Rika asks after putting her own ribbon around Anna’s neck, as if she were lifting a burden from herself and placing it onto Anna in a moment of forced conformity if also a well-meaning rather than oppressive gesture. When Rika takes her own life by jumping from the bell tower not long after, it provokes a degree of soul-searching among everyone at the school but most especially Anna and Rika’s best friend Shiori (Anji Ikehata).

After reading Rika’s diary, Anna begins seeing a blue orb she believes to be Rika’s spirit which eventually settles in her chest and begins to alter her personality to become a little more malleable and conformist as expressed by the Edwardian-style high collars of her uniform and newly deferent personality. It’s never quite clear if this is “real”, Anna’s delusion, a manifestation of her attempt to come to terms with grief, or deliberate subterfuge as she begins to develop a friendship with Shiori in part based on the notion that she has been possessed by Rika. The pair are both trying in one sense to get a handle on the sides of Rika that they didn’t have access to in order to understand why she died. 

But Rika’s diary is full of insecurity. She feels herself under pressure training to train for the school’s traditional dance show and is paranoid that she makes those around her worry when she doesn’t perform well enough. The dance itself is strangely sensual and witchy, earthy and rooted in nature in contrast to the religious setting of the school. On reading the diary, Shiori realises that shortly before she died Rika tried to confess her feelings for her, but Shiori simply didn’t understand and worries this accidental and insensitive rejection may have contributed to her desire to take her own life. It is not especially the religiosity of the school that is repressive, however, so much so as the enforced conformity of their social class. 

Aside from their association with “Class S” lesbian romance literature, these kinds of boarding schools are associated most closely with upper-class women who are being trained to become wives of important men. As such it is important that they learn to be, unlike Anna, meek and obedient. On a return home, Shiori attends a dinner party at which only her sister is dressed in red and seated across from a man to whom she has evidently been betrothed for an arranged marriage. Shiori is mildly horrified, but her sister just seems to stare on vacantly as if resigned to her fate. But it’s also this image of properness that may have prevented Rika getting the help she needed before she died as her animosity towards her family and fear of her father were ignored because of their social standing. Rika’s apparently distraught father is determined to retrieve the diary presumably because he fears what might be written inside it. Rika’s role as a model student might then have been a persona that marked her attachment to alternate familial home and a desire to escape sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

A video is leaked showing a young girl smoking in one of the school’s bedrooms with many believing it to be Rika, though it isn’t really clear who is it just as it is often unclear whether Anna is Rika or a version of herself. A final moment of rebellion, Anna challenges the enquiry into Rika’s death accusing them of using Rika’s death for their own ends to explore questions about themselves rather than directly confronting their own realities, though perhaps this is what she too has been doing. In an ironic way, it’s through letting Rika go that Anna and Shiori are able to move forward with their lives, but in other ways they take her with them as if she really had settled somewhere in Anna’s chest. Anna has learned how to dance for herself and come to some kind of accommodation with the world, while Shiori has been presented with a picture of herself that is also a picture of Rika in its reflected gaze. Sakamoto leans into J-horror territory in capturing the gothic atmosphere of the school, though as Anna later says, the ghosts themselves are not really frightening so much as an expression of that which remains unknown an acceptance of which defines adult enlightenment.

White Flowers and Fruits screened as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

Trailer (no subtitles)