Tag: Taiwan Film Festival in Australia

Taiwan Film Festival in Australia Returns for 2025

July 24, 2025by Hayley Scanlon

The Taiwan Film Festival in Australia returns for its 8th edition 24th July to 6th September 2025, travelling to six cities across the country. This year’s festival puts women at the forefront with female-led dramas featuring family relationships, pregnancy, IVF, and nuanced explorations of sexuality and desire.

Daughter’s Daughter

Sylvia Chang stars as an ageing woman trying to come to terms with motherhood through the prism of the daughters she did and didn’t raise. When the daughter she raised in Taiwan is killed while receiving fertility treatment in New York, she becomes the guardian of a viable embryo and is presented with a choice. Review.

Flower of Shanghai

The Closing Night Gala presented at the Sydney Opera House is the 4K restoration of the Hou Hsio-Hsien classic set in the “flower houses” of the British concession in late 19th century Shanghai.

The Chronicles of Libidoists

Latest from Yang Ya-Che loosely based on the Little Mermaid in which four people adrift in pursuit of sexual gratification are united by their desire for something more.

Unexpected Courage

Romantic drama in which a long-term couple who had been leading parallel lives is forced into a recontemplation of their relationship when one of them is hospitalised and they spend every moment together in their hospital room.

Yen and Ai-Lee

Gritty drama in which a young woman is released from prison after killing her abusive father only to learn her mother (played by the iconic Yang Kuei-mei) is dating another abusive man.

Worth the Wait

Asian-American romantic drama revolving around four couples who are each contending with the scars of the past.

Organ Child

Taut action thriller in which a father purses revenge against those whom he believes stole and trafficked his baby daughter. Review.

Stranger Eyes

A fracturing family is confronted with the cracks in its foundations when they begin receiving strange DVDs after the disappearance of their daughter in Yeo Siew Hua’s elliptical drama. Review.

Dancing Home

Documentary focusing on Paiwan choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava.

The Taiwan Film Festival in Australia runs 24th July to 6th September in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. Full details for all the films as well as ticketing links can be found on the official website while you can also follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for all the latest news.

Fish Memories (（真）新的一天, Chen Hung-i, 2023)

September 1, 2024by Hayley Scanlon

The sometime narrator at the heart of Fish Memories (（真）新的一天, (zhēn) Xīn de tiān) says that she wishes her memory were like that of a fish, no longer than seven seconds, and that she were able to be free of her traumatic past by forgetting it. But of course, she is unable to forget and like her boyfriend, Shang, and the middle-aged man with whom the pair eventually form a twisted relationship, a kind of orphan drifting in the wake of parental failure.

Businessman Zi Jie (Frederick Lee) also seems to drifting, seemingly dissatisfied with his financially comfortable but emotionally empty existence. He later says that his own parents only cared about about money and sent him away to Singapore when he was a teenager only for their business to then fail. He feels as if he’s done better than them, at least, but when asked how to avoid loneliness he answers only “earning money, spending money, earning money”. He has a girlfriend of around his own age, but bristles when she expresses a desire for greater intimacy and ends up pushing her away while beginning to bond with Shang (Hank Wang), a teenager he meets in a convenience store while picking up a parcel. He runs into the boy a few more times and ends up developing a friendship with him and also his same age girlfriend Zhen Zhen (Lavinia) who is still in high school and claims to have been sexually assaulted by one of her teachers who’s apparently done the same thing to several other girls with no apparent consequences.

Zi Jie’s relationship with the teens straddles an awkward divide, partly parental and partly friendly. He seems to partially regresses in their company, drinking incredibly expensive wine but also sitting around playing video games and agreeing to childish dares such as the one in which he ends up swapping places with Shang, waking up in his walkup apartment and dressing in his clothes. Shang’s living environment is not ideal, Zi Jie balks at the stairs while the place is cramped and filled with junk and Shang evidently rarely does no laundry but to Zi Jie it represents a kind of freedom. Of course, he can always return to his luxury apartment which still has power even during an outage which is an option not open to Shang who nevertheless seems to increase in confidence while wearing Zi Jie’s fancy tailored suit. Several times he approaches his rundown apartment block and looks to the sky as if echoing his sense of aspiration though that turns out not to be the reason he’s interested in Zi Jie.

When he first gave him a car ride, Shang blunts told Zi Jie he wouldn’t sleep with him because he liked girls, remarking that Zi Jie looked “a bit gay”, but a sexual relationship does eventually evolve between the trio even as they also form an unconventional family unit. When they sit down to breakfast together with the doors onto the courtyard open and the sun drifting in with idyllic view behind, Zhen Zhen remarks that it’s the kind of moment she’s been waiting for all her life despite the awkwardness of this quasi-incestous and definitely inappropriate relationship given that the teens are underage and Zi Jie is a wealthy middle-aged man keeping them in his apartment.

But it’s perhaps when the streams start to cross that things begin to go wrong, Zi Jie making a huge miscalcutation while in the teens’ world that provokes a tragic event biding each of them together though only in the darkest of ways. The three of them are each in their way trapped in a tank, no more free than the fish they place inside it and in the end able to find freedom, of one kind or another, by remembering and acknowledging the truth. Repressing his sexuality and chasing only empty financial success has evidently left Zi Jie a hollow, broken man seeking to reconnect with his younger self through his relationship with Shang which in its way also prevents him from acknowledging the vast gulf that exists between them in their differing circumstances but also unites them in a shared feeling of irresolvable loneliness and the legacy of parental abandonment in a sometimes indifferent society defined by economic success.

Fish Memories screens 8th September in Melbourne as part of this year’s Taiwan Film Festival in Australia.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Breaking and Re-entering (還錢, Wang Ding-Lin, 2024)

August 5, 2024by Hayley Scanlon

You go to the trouble of planning a massive heist, and then it turns out you have to put it all back again. The gang of theives at the centre of Wang Ding-Lin’s hugely entertaining crime caper Breaking and Re-entering (還錢, huán qián) brand themselves modern day Robin Hoods, pausing for a laugh when they claim to help the poor, “yeah, us”. Yet there is something a little suggestive about this particular gig as they find themselves hired for an inside job by an obnoxious bank chief who claims the most important thing in life is yourself and those around you are merely passengers to be jettisoned at will..

Chen (Wu Kang-ren) is a rich kid who inherited the family bank and thinks he’s hot stuff after studying abroad, speaking Mandarin like foreigner and peppering his speech with English. His big idea is a cryptocurrency called BST and his tagline is “Peace, Love, and Money” while ironically enough he is also claiming to run a charity to help the poor. It’s obvious he’s running some kind of scam and not altogether surprising that he’d plot to rob his own back and then have the thieves bumped off to keep them quiet along with the two employees he’s decided to frame for the crime. Unfortunately for everyone, one of his scapegoats, Shen Shu-wen (Cecilia Choi), is the long lost flame of chief crook Po-chun (Chen Bo-lin) who, having realised Chen plans to bump her off, comes to the conclusion his only option is to mess up Chen’s plan by putting the money back in the vault.

Of course, Chen is a kind of gang leader too complete with his own chief minion, Hu, though at one point he simply shoots one of his guys in the back of the head after he complains that Chen that doesn’t really value him. By contrast, Po-chun’s gang is a close-knit family, a brotherhood of thieves founded on mutual solidarity and infinite loyalty. Chen’s philosophy maybe that the individual is all, but these men live and die for each other. Nevertheless, Po-chun has a problematic hero complex that sees him, as others put it, aways trying to “take responsibility alone”, sacrificing himself for the group rather than allow his fellow gang members to shoulder some of the burden. That’s presumably one reason he (un)intentionally ghosted Shu-wen after getting arrested and going to prison, convincing himself he was doing the noble thing by avoiding getting Shu-wen mixed up with crime but perhaps also ashamed and insecure unwilling to let her know he met her as part of a heist and his cover personality wasn’t real while never giving much thought to her feelings. Shu-wen spent the last five years looking for him which was apparently a primary motivation for changing her career to work in the bank.

Po-chun’s quest is really one of maturity, to stop being the lone hero and fully integrate into the group by sharing responsibility with the others rather than jump straight to self-sacrifice. As he says through the medium of a montage sequence, their secret weapon is teamwork which is how they’re able to fight back against the well equipped Chen and his minions when the reason Chen flounders is his arrogance and the indifference of his men. That is not to say there isn’t tension in the team, such as the unrequited attraction bruiser Wen-hao has for Po-chun that is quite definitely antagonised by the resurfacing of Shu-wen who seems to have figured out the group dynamics pretty quickly in addition to seeing through Po-chun’s strong man act.

It’s the warm-hearted, lived-in relationships between the team members that give the film it’s charm along with the quirkiness of the elaborately planned reverse heist and its mild dig at corporate tyranny along with class-based inequality. But most of all what it seems to advocate for is a collective spirit and the triumph of the intellect over the pampered authority of rich kid Chen as Po-chun strategises a way out of his grasp while ending his influence and getting the girl. Wholesome and charming, the film makes the most of its surreal humour along with some hilariously placed reality gags such the infuriating slowness of a “high end automatic door” that ironically prevents a wealthy crook from fleeing the scene.

Breaking and Re-entering screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival and is also screening as part of the Taiwan Film Festival in Australia

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Taiwan Film Festival in Australia Returns for 2024

July 24, 2024by Hayley Scanlon

The Taiwan Film Festival in Australia returns for its 7th edition 25th July to 14th September 2024 travelling to six cities across the country. The festival will also host a pitching competition on 13th September which aims to promote Taiwanese literature in translation by adapting books into screenplays, in addition to its Taiwanese Bookshelves event which welcomes Hsiao Ya-Chuan in conversation at Kinokuniya Sydney on 26th July.

Old Fox

A young boy begins to absorb all the wrong lessons while drawn to his enigmatic landlord in Hsiao Ya-chuan’s 80-set coming-of-age drama. Review.

And Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Documentary reconstructed from police body camera footage, media reports, and first-hand interviews exploring the death of a migrant worker killed by police.

Love is a Gun

Noirish directorial debut from actor Lee Hong-Chi as a man recently released from prison tries to make an honest living renting out umbrellas by the sea but is soon pulled back towards a life of crime.

Tales of Taipei

10 tales of love in Taipei directed Yin Chen-Hao (Man in Love, 2021), Joseph Hsu (Little Big Women, 2020), Chong Keat-Aun (Snow in Midsummer, 2023), Wong Yee-Lam (My Prince Edward, 2019), Pawo Choyning Dorji (The Monk and The Gun, 2023), Rachid Hami (For My Country, 2021), and Remii Huang (Let’s Talk About Chu, 2023), Lee Sin-Je (Abang Adik, 2023) and Liu Chuan-Hui (Jump Ashin!, 2011).

Snow in Midsummer

Emotional drama revolving around the 13 May Incident which took place in Malaysia in 1969.

18×2 Beyond Youthful Days

Poignant romantic drama in which a lost 36-year-old man travels to Japan chasing the trail of a young woman he once knew from a heady summer working in a karaoke bar in rural Taiwan. Review.

Free beats: The Musical Journey of Chen Ming Chang

Documentary focussing on renowned folk musician Chen Ming Chang who is well known for playing the yueqin and has contributed film scores to such masterpieces as Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Dust in the Wind and The Puppet Master as well as Hirokazu Koreeda’s Maborosi.

The Taiwan Film Festival in Australia runs 25th July to 14th September in Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Full details for all the films as well as ticketing links can be found on the official website while you can also follow the festival on Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube for all the latest news.