20 Documentaries you shouldn’t miss at the 13th Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival (Part 1)

By Asian Film Festival on May 6, 2022 • ( 1 Comment )

These are twenty documentaries you shouldn’t miss at the 13th Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival which will take place from May 6 – 15, 2022.

To see the first part of this list please go here: PART 2

– Selected Documentaries –

**206: Unearthed** by Heo Chul-nyung – South Korea, Thailand | 2021 – 93 minutes
**Section**: Asian Vision Competition

More than a million South Koreans died during the Korean War and the full extent of the atrocities committed during the war remains unknown to this day. In 2005, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) uncovered 168 massacres, but by 2010, the commission was shut down. Haunted by the unsolved murders, these former investigators and the bereaved families restarted a project at various areas to uncover the truth on their own. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**A Rifle and a Bag** by Cristina Hanes, Isabella Rinaldi, Arya Rothe – India, Italy, Qatar, Romania | 2020 – 90 minutes – **Section**: Asian Vision Competition

Somi and her husband are striving to build a new life after fighting for a decade alongside the Naxalites, a Maoist guerrilla group from India. In the aftermath of surrendering to the police, the couple is struggling to safeguard their children’s future through education. But the central government, they once fought against, seems to deny them a future and redemption. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**A Silent Gaze** by Huang Hsin-yao – Taiwan | 2022 – 181 minutes
**Section**: Taiwan Competition

Since 2009, the filmmaker has spent 12 years documenting the ever-changing times of three townships along the coast of Tainan County, namely Beimen, Jiangjun and Qigu. Through the lenses, human activities are seen closely connected with the surrounding nature, while maintaining its own charm. The film subtly captures a singular way of life and a sense of time suspended in the past, present and future. (TIDF 2022)

As a part of a discussion on memory and detemporality, this work comes in another 3-channel video installation as further dialogue with this single-channel video.

Trailer:

**A Thousand Fires** by Saeed Taji Farouky – France, Netherlands, Palestine, Switzerland | 2021 – 91 minutes – **Section**: International Competition

In the Magway region of Myanmar, a country home to one of the oldest petroleum industries in the world, live husband and wife Thein Shwe and Htwe Tin. Running an unregulated oil field, they produce a barrel every few days. They wish above all else to see their youngest son succeed, to break the cycle of poverty. A kettle boils. Mud slicked hands work sputtering machines. The ambient sound of a football match hums from a nearby television. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**According to China** by Wang Wo – China | 2010 – 115 minutes
**Section**: Malleable Docu/Memory: Archival/Found Footage and More

The film explores various events and performances aired on television and internet in 2008, alongside related reports and discussions that came afterwards. Everybody seemed to have their own opinions and judgments. The year 2008 has passed, but similar situations still go on every single day. (TIDF 2022)

**Children of the Mist** by Ha Le Diem – Vietnam | 2021 – 93 minutes
**Section**: Asian Vision Competition

Di is a 12-year-old girl living in a village in the mist of Northwest Vietnamese mountains. She belongs to the Hmong ethnic minority where women get married very young, enduring the controversial tradition of ‘bride-kidnapping’. When Di enters puberty, the carefree little girl has turned into an impetuous, hypersensitive teenager. On the Lunar New Year’s Eve, when Di’s parents come back home after celebrating, the house is silent and empty: Di has disappeared. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Crossing’s End** by Shih Yu-lun – Taiwan | 2021 – 116 minutes
**Section**: Taiwan Competition

In 2002, WANG and his girlfriend met up at a bridge to discuss the breakup, but then she accidentally fell off the bridge and died. WANG asked a friend to call an ambulance, while his girlfriend’s parents later accused them of murder. They weren’t prosecuted until a witness claimed the two of them threw the victim off the bridge. Thirteen years later, Taiwan Innocence Project decided to take on the case as there was no evidence apart from that altered witness testimony. In the face of many lingering doubts, what should one believe? (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Danse Macabre** by Thunska Pansittivorakul, Phassarawin Kulsomboon – Germany, Thailand | 2021 – 90 minutes – **Section**: International Competition

‘Danse Macabre’ is a dance that explores deaths that are remembered and forgotten in history, including those of kings, citizens, and stateless people, on land that many kings chose as their vacation residence. People’s deaths are as different as the social class they belong to, in a country where social inequality strongly persists.IIn Thailand, many deaths were suspicious in nature over the past 90 years, but nobody dared to question them. (TIDF 2022)

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**Irradiated** by Rithy Panh – France | 2020 – 88 minutes
**Section**: Contemporary Scenes

Through the encounters and testimonies of victims of bombings that remind him of his past and what he has lived through, director Rithy PANH crosses these stories in all senses, using images, words and looks that bear witness to the attempt to destroy the world. And yet the traces are there. Tangible, real. Even nature speaks. Some plants become monstrous, while others resist and heal wounds. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege** by Abdallah Al-Khatib – France, Lebanon, Qatar | 2021 –89 minutes
**Section**: Asian Vision Competition

The district of Yarmouk in Syria sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018. When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and has set up a siege since 2013. Gradually deprived of food, medicine and electricity, the besieged inhabitants decided to face the siege with rallying, study, music, love and joy. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer: