20 Documentaries you shouldn’t miss at the 13th Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival (Part 2)

By Asian Film Festival on May 7, 2022 • ( 1 Comment )

We continue with our list of 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 1

– Selected Documentaries –

**Rain in 2020** by Lee Yong-chao – Myanmar, Taiwan | 2021 – 79 minutes
**Section**: Taiwan Competition

Rain in 2020 took LEE Yong-chao seven years to make. It shows how a family copes with the changing situation and what is happening in Myanmar. Amid the pandemic in 2020, a torrential rain caused the family and the entire village to soak in the flooding sewage. Nobody knows when the muddy water will be gone and what will come after the storm. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Small Talk** by Huang Hui-chen – Taiwan | 2016 – 88 minutes
**Section**: Taiwan Spectrum | Triviality that Speaks Volumes: Personal Cinema of Female Directors Since the 1990s

We live in the same space, my mother and I. But we are like strangers under one roof. Our only exchanges are the meals she cooks and leaves for me on our dining table. No hellos, no goodbyes, let alone ‘I love you’. Silence permeates our house as I watch her, knowing that beneath the deafening silence lies a secret that weighs heavily on her. But am I ready to hear what she has to say? (TIDF 2022)

Screening Dates:
May 8, 2022 | Sunday | TFAI Cinema B | 16:50 pm (With Q&A)

**Taste of Wild Tomato** by Lau Kek-huat – Taiwan | 2021 – 123 minutes
**Section**: Taiwan Competition

Kaohsiung served as an important military base under Japanese colonial rule and had incurred heavy casualties during the 228 Incident. The film subtly tends to the deep scars of the witnesses, survivors and their descendants as an act of resistance to oblivion. Memories survive through different eras of oppression and continue to live in people’s hearts, just like the wild tomatoes grown in this land. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**The Burrows** by Hu Sanshou – China | 2021 – 101 minutes
**Section**: Asian Vision Competition

In the town where the filmmaker was born, he and his family are following an age-old tradition by building a tomb for his grandparents. This carefully composed portrait of a village, interspersed with scenes of people at work, personal memories, and philosophical reflections, gradually unveils the spiritual world of the hometown and offers a meditation on existence itself. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**The Grass is Greener on the Other Side** by Crystal Wong – Hong Kong, UK | 2022 – 60 minutes
**Section**: Salute! Chinese Independent Documentaries

Thousands of Hongkongers, still living in the shadow of the 2019 protests, are immigrating to the UK to forge a freer future. This film documents their struggle to break free from a homeland that is no longer welcoming, while holding on to the Hongkonger identity in which they find purpose. In exile, can the Hongkonger identity persevere, or is it destined to obscurity? Can they really find a place to call home? (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**The Lucky Woman** by Tseng Wen-chen – Taiwan | 2020 – 87 minutes
**Section**: Taiwan Competition

Tsao-yun paid an 8,000 USD recruitment fee and ran away before her 3-year contract was due. Wei-shing is also a ‘runaway’ who dealt with his homesickness by painting on the wall. Why running away? To make more money or to pursue better opportunities? The film presents the life of runaway migrant workers through Tsao-yun’s and Wei-shing’s narratives, showing how they risk their life working illegally, hoping to better support their families and change their own futures. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Tokyo Kurds** by hyuga Fumiari – Japan | 2021 – 103 minutes
**Section**: Asian Vision Competition

In the 1990s, about 2,000 Turkish Kurdish refugees settled in a suburb of Tokyo; however, up until today, most of them are still illegal immigrants. Ozan has been working illegally as a construction worker, and is anxious about his uncertain future. Mehmet spent 520 days in detention for no apparent reason while suffering from a critical health condition without medical aid. Ramazan has been trying various ways to obtain a visa but his illegal immigrant status has kept him from his dream. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**War Is a Tender Thing** by Adjani Arumpac – Philippines | 2013 – 71 minutes
**Section**: Focus Programme | Necessary Fictions: Negotiating Realities in Post-national Philippine Documentaries

Through her own family’s memories of struggle, Adjani unravels the story of the war-torn Southern Philippines as an endless attempt at survival and adaptation to state policies that disregard the most basic concept of home. However imperfect and partial, these memories make up a narrative of the war that is as cogent as the factual telling. (TIDF 2022)

**Weiyena – The Long March Home** by Weina Zhao, Judith Benedikt – Austria | 2020 – 96 minutes
**Section**: International Competition

Two family histories, one century and two metropolises merge in one person: Weina ZHAO, whose parents called her ‘Vienna’ – Wéiyěnà – because they emigrated to Austria. Her journey into the history of China leads to the Japanese Occupation and the Cultural Revolution, while tackling the great issues of the 21st century: migration, identity and the search for one’s past. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer:

**Zinder** by Aicha Macky – France, Germany, Niger | 2021 – 84 minutes
**Section**: International Competition

In the town of Zinder in Niger, the poor area of Kara-Kara which used to be the lepers’ district, a culture of gang violence reigns. A group of youths is trying to break free from this violence, trying to start a family and make a life for themselves rather than end up in prison. The Zinder-born filmmaker films their daily lives divided between their gangs and their families, witnessing their desire to break free from the cycle of violence which has built their identities. (TIDF 2022)

Trailer: