A 17-year-old university student returns home during her summer holidays to the port city of Keelung of on the outskirts of Taipei. She falls in love with a young man, but his association with a local gang sees him caught up in a turf war. A wistful portrayal of the fragile, brief-lived attraction between these two youths, and pleasant times spent with loving families.
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 Minnan, pineapple rhymes with ‘luck’ and is an auspicious symbol. Carrying a pineapple with him, a young man travels with his mentally handicapped younger brother from their hometown in the provinces to Taipei, where a relative works in a factory. There the brothers witness a scene of labour dispute. Will the pineapple bring them luck after all? After scripting Love Is a Gun (2023), winner of the Lion of the Future award at the Venice International Film Festival 2023, LIN Cheng-hsun presents this new short, a dramatisation of brotherly affection, through a sophisticated command of cinematic and narrative devices.
Laichun, her father and two mothers, uncle and grandfather are of different generations; thus they all think differently. Father is the family head, and because he believes he must continue on the family name ends up taking two wives. His first wife also feels the same way, and so allows the second wife. Laichun feels the abyss between her and her parents and ends up getting pregnant, but hits a wall when her boyfriend does not take any responsibility. When her father is hospitalized, she begins to understand her father and two mothers. She is finally growing up.
The story concerns a male youth named Ah Chung (or Diong-ah in the Taiwanese dialect) who graduates from high school and descends into a maelstrom of personal, familial, and communal conflicts. Ah Chung is going through the liminal stage of finding his place and aim in life. He is sent by his mother to a boot camp, training as one of the Eight Generals. This is a job in performing as a god in Taiwanese popular rituals and Ah Chung's mother believes it can bring spiritual and social goodwill to the much-troubled family: Financially strained mother who is a performer of "low-brow" entertainment, a kid brother who is somewhat retarded, a half-sister who is raped by his alcoholic father, and Ah Chung's listlessness which is easily sucked in by the local gang rivalry...
In Goodbye Again, a mother has to deal with one of the most heartbreaking events as a parent: saving a drug addict child. Coming home for dinner and facing her demure mother, the agitated daughter alternates between derisive manipulation and loving care, oblivious to the uncommonly preoccupied and nervous mother who nibbles at the bitter melon without a word of reproach. Filled with tension and deceptively simple, the very short drama is a powerful portrayal of mother-daughter dynamics in a modern single-parent Chinese family.
Two years post heart transplant, Ah Xun remains unable to shake off the gloom cast over his renewed life. First, there is a house fire; then, an unprecedented pandemic breaks out. Retreating to his grandfather’s home, Ah Xun finds himself persistently haunted by a string of unfortunate events. He is faced with an ex lover’s return, an encounter with the mixed-race sibling neighbours, the harrowing news of his mother’s cancer, his sister’s nervous breakdown, a friend’s drug issues, and now, the news of his grandfather testing positive for the new disease.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Luo’s elder brother has been staying with him, who finds the arrangement increasingly irritating. When Luo’s brother unknowingly ruins his carefully prepared dinner for a date, long-held grudges come to the surface and the brothers enter into a big fight. Despite Luo’s good intentions, it looks like the dinner date is going to fail, and as his brother intervenes to save the day, the two talk again. The nuanced short is highlighted by a remarkable performance and a story that flows effortlessly with affecting emotions.
On Valentine’s Day, two long-time girlfriends meet in a cafe. One of them dominates the conversation as the other silently listens. As we learn about their stories, their joys and sorrows, tension slowly escalates between the young women, until the truth comes out in the end. Who has the upper hand in this female friendship? Adapted from Swedish playwright August STRINDBERG’s 1889 one-act play The Stronger (Den starkare), the short explores the age-old theme of female agency in contemporary Taiwan, accompanied by Valentine vignettes of the other young people in the cafe.
After school, Xiao-Ci wants to talk to her mother about what happened in school today, but her mother was too busy looking for the evidence to prove Xiao-Ci ’s father is still smoking secretly. Xiao-Ci’s mother was sure that, last night, she heard the sound of a lighter: “Pada!”
