15 Films you shouldn’t miss at the 24th Taipei Film Festival

By Asian Film Festival on June 22, 2022 • ( Leave a comment )

These are fifteen films you shouldn’t miss at the 24th Taipei Film Festival which will take place from June 23 until July 9, 2022 in Taipei, Taiwan.

– Selected Shorts –

**After Yang** by Kogonada – USA | 2021 – 96 minutes
**Section**: World Cinema

When his young daughter’s beloved companion – an android named Yang – malfunctions, Jake searches for a way to repair him. In the process, Jake discovers the life that has been passing in front of him, reconnecting with his wife and daughter across a distance he didn’t know was there. (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**American Girl** by Feng-I Fiona Roan – Taiwan | 2021 – 101 minutes
**Section**: International New Talent Competition

When her mother suffers a relapse, Fang-yi, who has lived in the US for five years, moves back to Taiwan with her mother and younger sister and is reunited with her father. Despite being born Taiwanese, Fang-yi struggles to define her national identify. Missing everything in the US, Fang-yi finds it hard to fit in with the school and feels alienated from her classmates. A rebellious teenager who longs to return to the US, Fang-yi fights with her mother every day. When a SARS outbreak occurs, her sister is forced go into isolation and Fang-yi disappears after having a big row with her mother. As the tension between mother and daughter intensifies, how will they reconcile with each other? (TFF 2022)

Screening:
June 26, 2022 | Sunday | Taipei Zhongshan Hall | 11:50 am

Trailer:

**Barbarian Invasion** by Tan Chui Mui – Hong Kong, Malaysia | 2021 – 106 minutes
**Section**: Asian Prism

Is it a comedy? An action film? A philosophical treatise? Barbarian Invasion is all of these, even if it starts off quietly. Li Yoon Moon drags her young son around with her; the sole purpose of his existence seems to be to exhaust his mother. She arrives to visit someone who at first seems to be an old friend, but we soon realize he is actually a director looking to cast her in his latest project. “Are we going to make a Hong Sang-soo film?”, she asks. But since he’s more interested in making a Malaysian Bourne Identity, he asks her to undertake three months of intensive martial arts training for the role. (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**Before, Now & Then** by Kamila Andini – Indonesia | 2022 – 103 minutes
**Section**: Asian Prism

The late 1960s. Nana cannot escape her past. Poverty-stricken, having lost her family to the war in West Java, she marries again and begins a new life. But the past lives on in her dreams. Her new husband is wealthy, but her place in the family is menial, and he is unfaithful.

Nana suffers in silence until the day she meets one of her husband’s mistresses and everything changes. Ino is someone she can trust, someone who offers her comfort and to whom she can confide her secrets, past and present. Together, the two women find the hope of new freedom… (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**Happiness** by Askar Uzabayev – Kazakhstan | 2022 – 131 minutes
**Section**: Asian Prism

A woman is standing in front of the mirror. She is beautiful and has a striking face and strong cheekbones. She is bracing herself, a last vestige of self-respect driving her on. Her body is black and blue from the marks of many years of abuse. She swathes it in the orange dress that represents her working life. In this world she is a successful influencer promoting a product line called “Happiness” that – as she demonstrates in her hypnotic sales pitches – is supposed to make women attractive and happy. But terror reigns at home; it even reigns in her newlywed daughter’s house too. A self-determined life is something about which a woman in Kazakhstan dares not even dream. (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**Haruhara-san’s Recorder** by Sugita Kyoshi – Japan | 2021 – 121 minutes
**Section**: Reality Bites

Starting to work part-time at a cafe after quitting the job as a curator at an art museum, 24-year-old Sachi has moved to an apartment room, where a regular at the café recommended. The whole renewal of her job and home is for overcoming the incident that her partner, Yuki, lost her life by suicide when they were living together. Yet, while Yuki can never be seen again, her image remains in Sachi’s mind, and the illusion still appears in front of Sachi’s eyes. Gradually, Sachi chooses to live her own life, being watched over by her uncle and aunt who have been taking care of her from the young age, friends, former colleagues, the café manager and others. (TFF 2022)

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**Intolerance** by Yoshida Keisuke – Japan | 2021 – 108 minutes
**Section**: World Cinema

Naoto Aoyagi runs a supermarket. One day, he sees a middle school student stealing cosmetics in his store. As the middle school student runs out of the supermarket, she gets hit by a car and killed in the accident.

The girl’s father, Mitsuru Soeda, does not believe the accusation that his daughter was stealing from the store. He begins to place people involved in his daughter’s death, including Naoto Aoyagi and the car driver, into a corner. Meanwhile, Naoto Aoyagi and the female car driver become confused by Mitsuru Soeda’s pressure and the intense media coverage. (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**Leonor Will Never Die** by Martika Ramirez Escobar – Philippines | 2022 – 99 minutes
**Section**: Wild Tales

Leonor Reyes was once a major player in the Filipino film industry after creating a string of successful action films, but now her household struggles to pay the bills. When she reads an advertisement looking for screenplays, Leonor begins tinkering with an unfinished script about the quest of young noble Ronwaldo, who was forced to avenge his brother’s murder.

While her imagination provides some escape from reality, she goes all-in after an accident involving a television knocking her out, sending her into a coma and transporting her inside the incomplete movie. Now Leonor can play out her wildest dreams firsthand and discover the perfect ending to her story. (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**Little Blue** by Lee Yi-fang – Taiwan | 2022 – 96 minutes
**Section**: International New Talent Competition

Little Blue is an obedient and naïve girl. On the beach, she loses her virginity to a boy, who not only plays on the school football team but is extremely popular with girls. At first, she thought she could win his love with her body, but to her embarrassment and astonishment, she finds out that the boy casually shows her intimate photos to his buddies. Her youth is destroyed when she realizes that the intimate relationship she cherishes means nothing more than a game to the boy. Keeping her mother in the dark, Little Blue begins exploring her body with strangers, figuring out the boundaries between intimacy and pleasure. Accidently, she discovers a secret she really doesn’t want to know… (TFF 2022)

Screening:
June 25, 2022 | Saturday | Taipei Zhongshan Hall | 19:40 pm

Trailer:

**Mama Boy** by Arvin Chen – Taiwan | 2022 – 98 minutes
**Section**: Taipei Film Awards

Xiao-hong, a shy 29-year-old fish store worker, lets his overprotective mother Meiling call the shots on everything in his life. After hearing about Xiao-hong’s failed blind date, his cousin decides to take him to a sleazy local hotel, where Lele oversees its prostitution business. Instead of falling for one of the prostitutes, Xiao-hong ends up being enamored with Lele. Despite Meiling’s watchful eye, Xiao-hong attempts an awkward courtship. However, as their unlikely bond develops, it appears that Lele sees Xiao-hong as a replacement for her wayward adult son, with whom she shares a contentious relationship. (TFF 2022)

Screening:
June 23, 2022 | Thursday | Taipei Zhongshan Hall | 19:20 pm

Trailer:

**Melody-Go-Round** by Lai Kuo-an – Taiwan | 2022 – 102 minutes
**Section**: Gala Presentation

Melody and her parents move into a mansion. It seems like a new start, but Melody’s struggle has just begun. The parents have already separated but live together for their daughter. Melody has already been aware of that empty-shell marriage, as cruel as if she is about to be abandoned. Based on the abandoned amusement park, Melody imagines her fantasy world – the Moon Kingdom. She indulges in the mirage to escape from reality. Unexpectedly, the Moon Kingdom’s companions kidnap Melody’s parents and make her hunt them down. Will she stay in the illusion or come back to reality? (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**My Best Friend’s Breakfast** by Ryan Tu – Taiwan | 2022 – 119 minutes
**Section**: Taipei Film Awards

There is always a unique flavor of youth. A foodie girl who regards food as the most important thing in her life accidentally ate the breakfast of a warm-hearted male senior for a whole year. Eating not only brings her a sense of healing, but also the sour and sweet taste of her first love. The story of her and her classmates is also the collective image of youth growth. (TFF 2022)

Screening:
June 29, 2022 | Wednesday | SPOT HUASHAN Cinema A One | 15:30 pm

Trailer:

**Once Upon a Time in Calcutta** by Aditya Vikram Sengupta – India, France, Norway | 2021 – 133 minutes
**Section**: Asian Prism

After the loss of her only daughter, Ela not only loses her identity as a mother but the reason to be with her husband. While trying to find a new identity, she tries to reignite her relationship with an old lover. Desperate to move out of her husband’s house and buy a place of her own, Ela confronts her stepbrother to claim her half of the share in their ancestral property, but he refuses to comply. When the banks refuse to give her a loan, Ela succumbs to her lascivious boss, who runs a fraudulent real estate business. Their lives finally culminate when the crimes of Ela’s boss are discovered, leading to Ela losing her new-found identity, love and independence. (TFF 2022)

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**The Apartment with Two Women** by Kim Se-in – South Korea | 2021 – 139 minutes
**Section**: Asian Prism

Yi-jung is in her late twenties and still lives with her mother. Having raised her daughter alone, Su-kyung is now ready to start a new life with her fiancé. Not so Yi-jung, who from an early age has all too often had to serve as an outlet for her irascible mother’s frustrations. The many years of disregard have left her with a crippling mixture of suppressed feelings towards her mother. When an argument between the two escalates in a supermarket car park, Su-kyung hits her daughter with her car. Just an accident, the mother claims. Malicious intent, Yi-jung retorts. This rebellion marks the beginning of an arduous process for both women to cut the cord. (TFF 2022)

Trailer:

**The Novelist’s Film** by Hong Sang-soo – South Korea | 2022 – 92 minutes
**Section**: Visions

Famous novelist Junhee meets up with two acquaintances. The first runs a bookstore and has not given her any feedback about her last book. The second is a filmmaker, who never adapts Junhee’s novel as planned. But the more pressing issue is that Junhee has not published anything in a while. Instead, she has begun to question her approach to writing and is having doubts about the sensibility that forged her charismatic, scathing personality. During a stroll in the park with the film director and his wife, she meets a famous actress, who is experiencing a similar hiatus. The two connect so deeply that an idea for a film, which would be her first, soon begins to germinate in the novelist’s mind. (TFF 2022)

Screening:
July 4, 2022 | Monday | Vie Show Cinemas Taipei Hsin Yi 11 | 21:50 pm

Trailer: