SEQALU: Formosa 1867 has been widely discussed in Taiwan in past few days, following its premiere last week. As the title implies, the television drama is set in Taiwan in 1867. SEQALU is the latest historical drama offering from PTS Taiwan depicting Taiwanese history. This follows suit from last year’s Island Nation, another big-budget work that dramatized the political history of Taiwan’s democratic transition Read More
The Soul stands out among recent Taiwanese film as an effective and well-executed commercial thriller. Though the film fails to stick the landing, with its convoluted and messy conclusion undoing some of the movie’s other merits, The Soul proves an entertaining watch—even a rather evocative one Read More
The rather inscrutably titled Coo-Coo 043 ( 一家子兒咕咕叫) proves a dramatic look at the lives of Taiwan’s working class, through the lens of pigeon racing. Though a bit overwrought at times, it is an effective work Read More
Swingin’ aims to be a charmful, cute, and playful story, even as it touches on contemporary social issues still debated in Taiwanese society. The short film tells the story of eleven-year-old elementary schooler Qiu Qiu, who has two gay fathers, one of which is his biological father. However, the film focuses more on Qiu Qiu’s relation with his non-biological father, Wu Jia-hao. Read More
If you are like me and consider Crazy Rich Asians one of the worst Asian American films ever made, you might very well enjoy Minari Read More
Green Jail is a documentary that chronicles the twilight days of Hashima Yoshiko, the last living Taiwanese resident of Iriomote Island, the second-largest island of Okinawa Prefecture Read More
“Footnote,” directed by Zhengfan Yang, consists primarily of footage of Chicago cityscapes in 2020. The footage is mostly of empty streets, paired with audio from police radio in the background Read More
Taking Back the Legislature, produced by the Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers group, is a powerful document of one of the most dramatic events of the Hong Kong protests of summer 2019 Read More
The short film, Night is Young, directed by Kwok Zune, follows a Hong Kong taxi driver on one night in 2019, sometime during the protests that broke out in reaction to a proposed extradition bill that allowed for the deportation of criminal suspects to China. It was feared that this bill would be deleterious to political freedoms in Hong Kong, with the bill used to deport pro-democracy advocates to China to face charges Read More
Wuhan Wuhan, directed by Yung Chang, is a humanistic look at everyday residents and medical workers in Wuhan at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. The documentary begins shortly after the peak of cases in the city, and follows residents of Wuhan until the end of the city’s lockdown in April 2020 Read More
A Holy Family (神人之家) is an insightful documentary that examines family dynamics. The movie follows the filmmaker, Elvis Lu, as he films his estranged family Read More
Over the span of nine years, documentary filmmaker, Wei Hsing Yang shot and edited Ballet in Tandem. The film is a true labor of love, with Mr. Yang spending two million NT of his own money, and fifty thousand NT from crowdfunding to receive a theatrical release. This debut film is a triumph and hardly feels like a young filmmaker’s work, as it is a film that handles the subject matter with great maturity. Read More