Taiwan Cinema

Within the urban gloom of Taipei, four youths face alienation, loneliness, and moments of existential crisis amidst a series of minor crimes.

Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment used for sexual trysts.

All the while, Master Chu tries to find his place in the foreign American world.

A senior chef lives with his three grown daughters; the middle one finds her future plans affected by unexpected events and the life changes of the other household members.

Ahda sells language tapes by day and attends cram school at night, but his real passion is to achieve the secret art of "vaulting" - defying gravity to leap impossible distances. Fired by the exploits of the legendary Red Lotus Society, Ahda is on a romantic quest for a master.

Puppeteer Li Tian-lu tells his life story, and through it, the story of Taiwan in the first half of the 20th century.

The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror" that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government after their arrival from mainland China in the late 1940s.

A metaphysical mystery about the lives of three couples in Taipei that continually intersect over a span of several weeks.

Each member of a middle-class Taipei family seeks to reconcile past and present relationships within their daily lives.

Ah-fei's mother, Hsin-chin, comes from a well off family headed by a doctor. Hsin-chin's marriage to a young engineer is not a happy one. Her circumstances change for the worse, and she can no longer count on her philandering husband to be the breadwinner. Her own family's fortunes have also declined with the death of her father. She is forced to pawn off her dowry to make ends meet. After paying off a bribe to some young men because her husband had had an affair with a married woman, Hsin-chin begins to asert herself as a matriarch. The family moves to Taipei where Ah-fei grows up and begins to show progress in her studies. Her father has changed into a meek and humble person, while her mother wields all the power. Ah-fei, being the daughter, is not favored by her mother, who looks more to her son. Thus Ah-fei must fight to convince her mother to let her go to a better school.

Based on a true story, primarily on a conflict between two youth gangs, a 14-year-old boy's girlfriend conflicts with the head of one gang for an unclear reason, until finally the conflict comes to a violent climax.

Autobiographical story about the life of a poor family in the Taiwanese countryside during the 1940s and 1950s as the Japanese rule of the island ends and nationalist forces of Kwomintang arrive when the Communists take the mainland.

Three vignettes from three different directors that tell stories of ordinary people during Taiwan's Cold War period.

Four short films from four different directors, spanning from the 1950s to the 1980s.

A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river; his dysfunctional parents are unable to provide any relief for him or themselves.

While never-ending rain and a strange disease spread by cockroaches ravage Taiwan, a plumber makes a hole between two apartments and the inhabitants of each form a unique connection, enacted in musical numbers.

The ethereally beautiful Vicky recalls her romances with Hao Hao and Jack in the neon-lit clubs of Taipei.

Historical drama about a man coping with the tragic death of his young wife. As he makes new connections, he works to be a better man and father.

A rather dejected Mei-li Chen lives with her extended family in the suburbs. She drops out of college when the boy she has a crush on finds a girlfriend. Mei-li eventually ends up selling tickets in a movie theatre. A great camaraderie then builds up between the two cashiers in the small ticket booth.

It's a story about love, desire - Taboo love between a sister and a brother.

The story concerns a male youth named Ah Chung who graduates from high school and descends into a maelstrom of personal, familial, and communal conflicts.

Kang-Yi is a teenage girl who lives in an apartment building in the port city of Keelung. Most of her family, and the people in the apartment, are blind, and she helps them out. Ah Ping, who was brought up on the mainland and only speaks Mandarin, comes back to Taiwan after dropping out of military academy. He stays in the same building, and starts to date Kang-Yi. This annoys one of her classmates, who claims she is his girl, and he gets his gang of thugs to bully Ah Ping.

Although their characters and temperaments couldn't be less alike, 19-year olds Wei and Jie are best friends. They're also neighbours, living with widower fathers and problem siblings in the suburbs of Taipei. When Wei is promoted from the rank of nightclub parking valet to the rank of debt-collector in Brother Gu's gang, he persuades his boss to hire Jie to work alongside him. Things begin to go wrong when they are given a handgun to reward their success in the new job. Always excitable and volatile, Jie becomes reckless and dangerous when he has the gun in his hand. When they try to collect a debt from the boss of a rival gang, a fight erupts and Jie shoots the gang-boss. The boys find themselves on the run. But fate and their youthful dreams still have tricks to play...

In Taiwan, a young woman, Lin-Lang, is released from prison after serving ten years for terrorist activity. She had turned to bomb making in grief after her mentor and lover, An Rong, who was also her university professor, was arrested for political activity and, she presumed, executed. In prison, she learns Rong is alive, and she maintains her spirits and sanity for the years in her cell by holding imaginary conversations with him. When she is released, she discovers he is married, has a child, and lives conventionally. She finds him; he's not happy to see her. How she reacts to losing the center of her life becomes the subject of the film.

A group of young Taipei residents is drawn into the city's underworld through the growing obsession of one, the boyish Ah-feng, for the sexy Cantonese mistress of a gang boss.