Get us in your inbox

Search

Taiwan Film Festival in Australia

  • Film, Film festivals
  • Recommended
A man carries a woman on his back, with a pink bus in the background, reflected in water in the foreground
Photograph: Supplied/Taiwan Film Festival in Australia
Advertising

Time Out says

Festival director Benson Wu has corralled another brilliant program that will stream online across Australia

You know the drill by now: this year’s Taiwan Film Festival in Australia was delayed at first, and then took the plunge with an online showcase instead. As it did last year too. The good thing about these unexpected digital events is the accessibility it allows. Anyone, anywhere in the country can jump online and stream horizon-expanding flicks from all corners of the globe.

Streaming on-demand from September 16-30 and running under the theme ‘Flavours’, the program is spectacular. Rom-com lovers will get a taste of the good stuff with director Chen Yu-Hsun’s kooky movie My Missing Valentine, depicting a lovelorn postal worker who is always one step ahead of everyone, and a bus driver who is one step behind, trying to figure out where a missing day of their life went. There’s a retrospective sidebar of the director’s previous movies too, including Tropical Fish and Love Go Go. As festival director Benson Wu says, “We wanted to focus on comedy this year to bring joy into people’s life and there is no better choice than showcasing Chen’s works that are full of creativity and comical storytelling style.”

C.B. Yi’s debut feature Moneyboys, about gay male sex workers, desire, the divide between the city and the village and societal resistance went off at Cannes, nominated for the Queer Palm, Un Certain Regard, and Caméra d’Or prizes. Also on the LGBTIQA+ front you can check out the visually mesmerising Butterflies, which depicts love on the run between a woman hunted by the authorities and the plastic surgeon she turns to help her disappear in a dystopian dream (or is it a nightmare?).

Check out another promising debut in director Wei Yu-Chen’s The Way Home: The Call of the Azangiljan, which features the Indigenous Paiwan peoples. Dremedreman, a single mother of three, is called home to take her place as chief of her tribe, but is torn between duty and another way. And, in a great year for startling debuts, Lê Bảo’s Taste offers a slow-burn cinematic trip. You can find all these and more in the program line-up here. Tickets are $12 a film, or you can grab all the short films for $60, all the features for $100, or $150 for the lot (called the Hardcore Pass). You deserve it.

Love movies? Check out the Sydney Underground Film Festival and the Queer Screen Film Festival

Stephen A Russell
Written by
Stephen A Russell

Details

Address:
Price:
$12-$150
Opening hours:
On demand
Advertising
You may also like
You may also like